LC 

loll 
AasCsl 



NOT "A COLLEGE FETISH." 



D. H. CHAMBERLAIN. 



NOT "A COLLEGE FETISH 



AN ADDRESS 



IN REPLY TO THE 



Address of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



The Harvard Chapter of the Fraternity 
OF the Phi Beta Kappa, 

At Cambridge, June 28, 1883, 

BY 

D. H. CHAMBERLAIN. 

n 

WITH PORTIONS OF ARTICLES 
BY 

Professors Zeller, Fisher, and Peabody. 



BOSTON: 
WILLARD SMALL, 

1884. 



IiClQII 

.AssCr 



W. F. Brown & Co., Printers, 
2 iS Franklin St., Boston. 






PREFACE 



The publication of the following address, — first delivered in the 
lecture course of the Yale Kent Club at New Haven, March 11, 1884, 
and repeated subsequently before the Amherst Chapter of the Phi 
Beta Kappa at Amherst College, May 2, 1884 ; at Phillips Academy, 
Andover, May 23, 1884 ; at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, May 10, 
1884, and before the Phi Beta Kappa of the University of Vermont, 
at Burlington, June 24, 1884, — has been delayed by my engagement, 
before its full completion, to deliver it before the American Insti- 
tute of Instruction at its annual session at Martha's Vineyard, the 
9th inst. In now publishing it I have appended to it portions of three 
articles which have seemed to me to best present certain valuable 
views of the Greek question, out of all that has come to my notice 
since the delivery of Mr. Adams's address. The article by Prof. Zeller 
appeared in the Deutsche Rundschau for March, 1884 ; that by Prof. 
Peabody in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1884, and that by 
Prof. Fisher in the Princeton Revieio for March, 1884. 

I hope I shall not be suspected of offering my present contribu- 
tion to this discussion as that of the " one man in ten thousand" 
whose voice Mr. Adams has not yet heard. On the contrary, I offer 
it simply as what my own studies have taught me — studies, I may 
add, never wholly pretermitted under any stress of adverse circum- 
stances during more than twenty years of rather active life, — 
what I have seen with my own eyes and observed with my own 
senses, and nothing more. I do not present it as my individual " ex- 
perience," like Mr. Adams. I confess I do not know so well as 
others, what the results of these studies have been on my own char- 
acter and life. Nor do I value, as Mr. Adams seems to do, any man's 
own estimate or testimony as to himself upon this subject. I think 
that almost the only thing of value one can contribute to this dis- 
cussion is those views and conclusions which one's study of the sub- 
ject and observation of others may have impressed upon one. 

For one thing, I have tried not to be dogmatic, biit to give re;i- 
sons for all my views, reasons which at least may be tested by other 
men's reason. It is a subject, however, on which I think the right 



IV PREFACE. 

of one holding my views to be dogmatic, as tlie word is generally 
used, may be easily defended. For, ia trnth, to assert the value 
and superior utility of Greek studies is to repeat the voice of the 
wisest men of the last three centuries at least, including the present 
age. I fully agree with Mr. Higginson when in his charming essay, 
he says " there is no more possibility of arbitrary choice in languages 
than in stones ; the best is the best."* ' 

Mr. Adams is at liberty to declare that he prefers the pearl to 
the diamond, or silver to gold, but the fact remains that the diamond 
and gold are the most precious of all gems or metals, and few feel 
called upon to prove their superiority 

The all-sufficing answer to the suggestions of Mr. Adams and 
President Eliot, in his recent Century article, of putting English or 
French or German on an equality with Greek and Latin, is that it 
is an attempt to treat things as equal which are not equal. Greek 
preceded English and French and German and is closely and inex- 
tricably intertwined with them, and leaving out of view its claims to 
superiority in all other respects, the fact of its priority in time 
remains, and if it is necessary to go back to the sources of anything 
in order to understand it, it is necessary to study and know Greek 
and Latin in order to know English or French or German. The 
question, then, really is not between Greek and English or French 
or German, but between English or French or German thoroughly 
studied and known and the same languages partly studied and 
partly known. 

"Parallel courses," "modern equivalents," "early differentiation 
of studies," "options looking to future pursuits," "studies admissi- 
ble with equal weight or rank," or whatever other catch-phrases 
may be used, — devices all which omit Greek, — are founded on a de- 
lusion as real and as unreasonable as would be a modern course in 
law which should omit Blackstone and Kent because contract and 
corporation law have enormously increased in importance in these 
days, and perchance the student's future practice may be mainly or 
exclusively in those branches. Surely we are fallen on evil days, 
when a man can- say of Greek, with the applause of any part of an 
intelligent audience, — " It bears no immediate relation to any living 

speech or literature of value." 

D. H. C. 
New York. July 10, 1884. 

*A plea for Culture, Atlantic Essays, p. 10. 



ADDRESS. 



My present task is wholly self-suggested and self-im- 
posed. It is simply an attempt to meet and controvert 
tlie arguments and opinions of the address of Mr. Charles 
Francis Adams, Jr., delivered in June last, before the 
Harvard Chapter of the Fraternity of the Phi Beta 
Kappa. I cannot say that I am called or moved by any 
sense of personal fitness or duty. The lines of my life 
lie, as they have lain, quite aside from the walks and ways 
of scholars. I can only say that the studies, reflections 
and experiences of my life have greatly interested me in 
this subject, and that I have some hope that what I may 
say will tend a little to more correct views and more in- 
telligent ojjinions upon the matters which I shall try to 
discuss. 

The address of Mr. Adams has naturally and deservedly 
attracted much attention. His public services and char- 
acter, his position as one of the representatives of an 
illustrious family, the vigor and courage of his address, 
the confidence of his tone, the personal and family illus- 
tratious which enliven his arguments, have united to give 
freshness and force to this latest discussion of an old and 
well-worn theme. 

I assume and believe that Mr. Adams was very much 
in earnest in this expression of his opinions and experi- 
ences. I shall certainlv treat his discourse as a serious 



6 ADDRESS. 

discussion and honest statement of conclusions. "Whatever 
criticisms may be made upon it, we ought, I think, to 
welcome it as a specimen of outspoken, vigorous opinions 
upon a theme of the very highest importance. If, as Mr. 
Adams thinks, nearly the whole cultivated world is still 
indulging in a most important feature of its higher educa- 
tion, in "fetish-worship"; in an absurd and unreasoning 
attachment to studies which are not suited to present 
wants, nor conducive to . present success — which are not 
only a waste of time, but by their compulsory requirement 
are excluding better studies, it is the right and duty of 
any earnest man to challenge the claims of such studies ; 
and the more securely they have become entrenched by 
custom and prescription, the greater is the duty of those 
who see or think they see their real hollowness and com- 
parative worthlessness, to expose and denounce the pre- 
tensions and false claims by which they have been 
supported. It is not sacrilege, surely, to destroy a 
" fetish " ! None of us, I presume, wish to continue to 
worship a " fetish." If, unhappily, we have been wor- 
shipping one, I am quite sure we should all welcome, as 
we ought to do, the voice that should expose, and the hand 
that should destroy even our " fetish." But old delusions 
retire slowly ; " fetishes " even, long worshipped, will 
struggle for a little longer recognition, and so, inevitably 
and finally, Mr. Adams must expect that men will still ask, 
what is a " fetish " ? and is that which in his address, at 
Cambridge, he describes and denounces as a " fetish," a 
real '? fetish," after all? That is the serious question — 
a question which I think is always one of deep interest, 
worthy of the best consideration, the most unfettered dis- 
cussion which any man can bring. If the study of Greek 
can be shown to be "fetish-worship," if it can be shown to 



ADDRESS. 



be less than the best use that can be made of the time of 
our youth, for their highest and best success — success in 
all its senses and forms — then let it cease, and let better 
implements of mental training take its place. 

In the task which I set before me — the only task I 
attempt — of replying to Mr. Adams — it is necessary to 
observe his exact positions, so far as they are disclosed by 
this address. Much misapprehension exists on this point 
which ought to be at once corrected, and for which Mr. 
Adams is not responsible. 

Let me quote Mr. Adams's words, which state his main 
demand and conclusion : 

"The modernist asks," he says, "of the college, to 
change its requirements for admission only in this wise : 
Let it say to the student who presents himself, ' In what 
languages, besides Latin and English, those are required 
of all — in what other languages — Hebrew, Greek, Ger- 
man, French, Spanish or Italian, will you be examined' ? 
If the student replies, ' In Greek,' so be it ; let him be 
examined in that alone ; and if, as now, he can stumble 
through a few lines of Xenophon or Homer, and render 
some simple English , sentences into questionable Greek, 
let that suffice ; as respects languages, let him be pro- 
nounced fitted for a college course. If, howevei', instead 
of offering himself in the classic, he offers himself in the 
modern tongues, then, though no mercy be shown him, 
let him at least no longer be turned contemptuously 
away from the college doors ; but instead of the poor 
quarter-knowledge, ancient and modern, now required, let 
him be permitted to pass such an examination as will show 
that he has so mastered two languages besides his own, 
that he can go forward in his studies, using them as work- 
ins; tools." 



O ADDRESS. 

This is a fair-sounding proposition : — Do not make 
Greek compulsory — leave it optional. But it involves 
just this question and consideration — whether Greek is 
or is not the best imj)lement for doing the proper work of 
the college ? The fact that some or many wished to take 
German or other modern language, in place of Greek, 
would not be even an argument in favor of allowing them 
to do it, unless it was first determined that German or 
some other modern language, could equally well do the 
work for which the college exists. 

Let no one here charge me with illiberality, for it is Mr. 
Adams who, in this address, tells us, "In regard to the 
theory of what we call a liberal education, there is, as I 
understand it, not much room for difference of opinion. 
There are certain fundamental requirements, without a 
thorough mastery of which no man can pursue a specialty 
to advantage. Upon these common fundamentals are 
grafted the specialties." 

Again he says, " I think all will admit that, as respects 
the fundamentals, the college training should be compul- 
sory and severe. It should extend through the whole 
course. No one ought to become a Bachelor of Arts until 
upon the fundamentals, he has passed an exammation, the 
scope and thoroughness of which should set at defiance 
what is perfectly well defined as the science of cramming." 

Mr. Adams and the advocates of Greek are, then, in 
complete agreement on these initial positions ; — Jirst, that 
there must be a fixed and comj)ulsory course of study, em- 
bracing certain studies which he has well enough called 
" fundamentals " ; second, that as to these "fundamentals," 
the training should not only be compulsory and severe, 
but that it should extend through the whole course ; and 
third, that upon these " fundamentals " no one should be 



ADDRESS. 9 

admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Art, who has not 
passed a rigid and thorough examination. 

These positions seem to leave only the question — what 
ought these " fundamentals " to be ? If we can determine 
that question our controversy ends ; for no man can dis- 
pute with me about the need of the utmost attainable thor- 
oughness in all college studies, or the correctness of what 
Mr. Adams calls " the greatest of all practical precepts — 
that every man should in life master some one thing, be 
it great or be it small " ; that " superficiality is dangerous 
as well as contemptible " ; that "what is worth doing at 
all is worth doing well " ; or, " finally," to quote still from 
Mr. Adams, " that the power to follow out a line of sus- 
tained, close thought, expressing oui-selves in clear, concise 
terms," is the result of "a mastery of well-selected funda- 
mentals " ; or, that a familiar knowledge of the modern 
languages is needful for the best success in many of the 
l^ursuits and studies of modern life, and that these lan- 
guages embody the best results of modern thought, modern 
science, and modern attainments of all kinds. 

I observe, with sincere pleasure, that Mr. Adams is 
not a champion of the so-called scientific training in dis- 
tinction from the classical or literary. Upon this point 
it is pleasant to quote from Mr. Adams : " I desire to 
say," he remarks, " that I am no believer in that narrow, 
scientific and technological training which now and again 
we hear extolled. A practical, and too often a mere 
vulgar, money-making utility seems to be its natural out- 
come." 

I see no trace, likewise, in this address, of approval of 
an extensive system of optional or elective studies in a 
college course; Judging him by the whole tenor of his 
discourse — by what he most insists upon — Mr. Adams 



10 ADDRESS. 

may be called orthodox and conservative on all these 
questions. 

Let us first see, then, what are Mr. Adams's reasons for 
not putting Greek among the '• fundamentals." 

In his judgment, Greek is in general too remote from 
modern life and thought ; " The human mind, outside of 
cloisters," he says, " is occupied with other and more 
pressing things," especially with " scientific thoughts " ; 
students are now brought up in a " new atmosphere," and 
are " not in sympathy with the remote past," and as the 
modern languages are the avenues to modern thought, they 
should be the college studies in preparation for modern 
life. Of Greek he says : " Not only is it a dead tongue, 
but it bears no immediate relation, to any living speech or 
literature of value." 

It is true that Mr. Adams in several instances concedes 
and asserts the value of Greek and' Latin, declaring, for 
example, that no one can admire more than he, " the 
subtile, indescribable fineness of thought and diction which 
a thorough classical education gives to the scholar." Else- 
where he says, " Of Greek really studied and lovingly 
learned, there cannot well be two opinions " ; it is " the 
basis of the finest scholarship " ; yet he finally says, 
" There is, in what are called the educated classes, both 
in this country and in Em'ope, a very considerable amount 
of affectation and credulity in regard to Greek and Latin 
masterpieces. That is jealously prized as part of the body 
of the classics, which if published to-day in German or 
French or English, would not excite a passing notice. 
There are immortal poets, whose immortality, my mature 
judgment tells me, is wholly due to the fact that they lived 
two thousand years ago." He declares as the result of all 
his experience and observation that " whether viewed as a 



ADDRESS. 11 

thing of use, as an accomplishment, as a source of pleas- 
ure, or as a mental training, I would rather myself be fam- 
iliar with the German tongue and its literature than be 
equally familiar with the Greek. I would unhesitatingly 
make the same choice for my child. What I have said 
of German as comj)ared with Greek, I will also say of 
French as compared with Latin. On this last point I have 
no question. Authority and superstition apart, I am in- 
deed unable to see how an intelligent man, having any 
considerable acquaintance with the two literatures, can, as 
respects either richness or beauty, compare the Latin with 
the French ; while as a worldly accomplishment, were it 
not for fetish-worship, in these days of universal travel 
the man would properly be regarded as out of his mind, 
who preferred to be able to read the odes of Horace rather 
than to feel at home in the accepted neiitral language of 
all refined society." 

Mr. Adams takes some positions from which indeed it 
is difficult to dislodge him. When he declares that in 
the Harvard of his day he was " compelled to devote the 
best part of his school life to acquiring a confessedly su- 
perficial knowledge of two dead languages " ; that " not 
only was the knowledge of our theoretical fundamentals 
to the last degree superficial, but nothing better was ex- 
pected " ; that " the fundamentals were no longer studied 
as a means, but as an end — the end being to get into col- 
lege " ; that " thoroughness of training in any real-life 
sense of the term was unknown in those branches with 
which I came in contact " ; he speaks of matters of which 
his knowledge ought certainly to be better than mine. I 
do not intend to be disrespectful to Mr. Adams when I 
say, however, that I do not believe that this is a fair or 
just account of the instruction in Harvard thirty years 



12 ADDRESS. 

ago or at any other time ; and that I do not believe any- 
considerable number of Harvard graduates will sustain 
Mr. Adams's assertions. 

But the question here is not whether Greek is taught 
or has been taught at Harvard in the manner which Mr. 
Adams represents, but whether if taught, as all will con- 
cede it should be taught — in the best practicable man- 
ner — it is still a " college fetish." 

Mr. Adams does not state explicitly the objects Avhich 
he conceives are to be specially sought by the compulsory 
study of the " fundamentals," — though he does say, 
" The whole experience and observation of my life lead 
me to look with greater admiration, and an envy ever in- 
creasing, on the broadened culture which is the true end 
and aim of the University." " On this point," he says, 
" I cannot be too explicit, for I should be sorry indeed if 
anything I might utter were construed into an argument 
against the most liberal education. There is a consider- 
able period in every man's life," he continues, " when the 
best thing he can do is to let his mind soak and tan in the 
vats of literature. The atmosphere of a university is 
breathed into a student's system — it enters by the very 
pores." ... "I would not narrow the basis of liberal 
education; I would broaden it." 

I understand myself, therefore, to be standing with Mr. 
Adams on this proposition — that a broad culture, the 
broadest culture, a liberal education, the most liberal ed- 
ucation — a culture and education which shall pervade 
the tnind and spirit as the breath pervades the body — is 
the true end and aim of the College — that is, of the dis- 
ciplinary training which precedes entrance on the active, 
responsible work of life. Certainly, I regard this propo- 
sition, entirely drawn in spirit, and almost in terms, from 



ADDRESS. 13 

Mr. Adams's address, as a correct and somewhat adequate 
general statement of the end to be sought by a compul- 
sory requirement of the " fundamentals," whatever they 
are. It may, then, be laid down again for the purposes 
of this discussion, with the concurrence of Mr. Adams, as 
it has often been laid down, that college studies — " the 
fundamentals " — should have for their chief and controll- 
ing object the training, discipline, education of the mental 
faculties ; that the end and aim of a college curriculum — 
the prescribed and enforced plan of study — should be 
always the general development, direction, inspiration and 
education of the mental powers. Mental power, the 
power and faculty to organize and direct the forces of 
human society — the wants, desires, interests of men — 
is, in the only sense here under consideration, the object 
of education. 

It appears to me perfectly obvious, and it has so ap- 
peared to the wisest educators in all modern times, that 
the foremost means to such an end is the study of 
language — the careful, thorough, long-continued study 
of the principles, structure and uses of language. The 
languages and the mathematics — the faculty and art of 
expression in language, and the habit and power of accu- 
rate, systematic reasoning — constitute and have in mod- 
ern times constituted the means of education, in this 
sense. Along with these, as a matter of necessary in- 
formation or knowledge, goes the study of history, geog- 
raphy and something of what we call natural science; 
but language and the mathematics are the chief disciplin- 
ary agents. Beyond a very narrow limit of mere utility 
for the commonest wants of life, the aim and value of 
the study of language and the mathematics, in schools 
and colleges, are disciplinary. Now, one seldom, if ever. 



14 ADDRESS. 

hears the study of the mathematics opposed or derided. 
They stand generally unchallenged, — why ? Not be- 
cause, beyond a very narrow limit, they are used or are 
expected to be used in the work of life. Like the use of 
the phj'sical gymnasium and its appliances, the further 
study of the mathematics is left to the leisure, the taste 
or the sense of duty of the individual man when engaged 
in the active pursuits of life. There can be no doubt that 
a life-long pursuit or study of the mathematics would" 
promote the strength and facility of the mental powers, 
just as a frequent or regular recurrence to the gymnasium 
or the athletic sports of youth would continue to give 
strength and endurance to the body. 

Why, then, do the mathematics stand unchallenged in 
all our prescribed courses? I suppose no other answer 
can be given than that the mathematics are held valuable, 
essential for intellectual training; and that the fact of 
their almost complete disuse in after life is not held to 
affect their value as means of mental discipline in schools 
and colleges. 

Now, I do not think the reasons why the study of 
language and the art of using it are held to be essential 
to the best mental training, are hard to understand. 
Language is the universal medium of thought, the chief, 
almost the only vehicle by which thought in all its forms 
is, or can be communicated. In a strict and very high 
sense, language is thought. Reason, reflection, emotion 
— all the highest powers of human nature — must seek 
language for expression and for influence on men. The 
tones of music, the tints of painting, the forms of sculp- 
ture are indeed modes of expressing thought, but ordinar- 
ily a man's power, his mental power, his power to influ- 
ence other men, is measured by his power to express 
thought in language. 



ADDRESS. 15 

If, then, language is the vehicle of thought, the condi- 
tion of making thought and the mental faculties, influen- 
tial, the study of language — its nature, its structure, its 
uses, its capacities, its highest manifestations, its noblest 
and most powerful forms — is necessarily the first and 
highest instrumentality for developing, training, educating 
the mental powers — absolute in its necessity, first in 
order of time, highest in the scale of importance. 

The study of language is, therefore, in no sense a mere 
prescription of the schools, an ancient educational super- 
stition, a "college fetish." It is a primordial necessity 
for the exercise of the human mind and reason, for the 
unlocking, the development of one's own powers of mind, 
for influencing, guiding, and controlling the minds, ac- 
tions, and lives of other men. 

We are now, I think, at a point where the question 
becomes simply, what languages — what forms, what 
growths and developments of language, — are best suited 
for instruction and training in the knowledge and art of 
using language ? 

In answering this question, certainly no language, no 
literature can be put aside because remote in time ; no 
language, no literature which in itself is of high value for 
its structure, its power or its beaiity, can be described, as 
Mr. Adams has described the Greek language and litera- 
ture, as " bearing no immediate relation to any living 
speech or literature of value." I hold it to be obviously 
a matter of little or no moment in answering this ques- 
tion, whether the language selected as a " fundamental," 
is now spoken on the continent of Europe or of America, 
or whether it disappeared as a spoken language two thous- 
and j'^ears ago. The only consideration is, what can a 
given language, what can the study of a given language;. 



16 ADDRESS. 

do for us to-day in the training of our mental faculties 
and in teaching us how to use the language to which we 
are born ? In the matter of the choice of a language for 
this purpose I might appeal for what I confess / should 
consider a conclusive answer, to the opinions and practice 
of the learned and wise in these matters of all ages. For, 
without important exception, it might be said that in all 
times, and in all cultivated lands, since the conquering 
Roman eagles were planted on the Acropolis of Athens, 
and Greek national life expired, and her language in its 
ancient purity and prevalence ceased to be the spoken 
language of a powerful and independent nation, the Greek 
language has been regarded as the most perfect form of 
human speech, and its study has been regarded as the 
best means of intellectual training, and of teaching the 
art of using language. 

But I am not quite willing to pause with this answer. 
Those who call the study of this language a " fetish," I 
am afraid, might still say that other superstitions, too, 
have survived all the mutations of time, and are still flour- 
ishing to-day. 

In what, then, it may be useful to ask, consists the su- 
perior value of the Greek language as an instrument of 
educational training or a means of teaching us the best 
and most effective use of our own tongue ? 

I cannot pause here to attempt to explain how the 
great fact of the Greek language, the Greek literature, the 
Greek nationality, the Greek character, came about. No 
subject could well be more interesting or more important 
in some aspects of this theme. That on the little trian- 
gular peninsula of Greece, a region for the most part 
rocky and mountainous, a soil in general thin and poor ; 
while Asia on the East presented only vast despotisms, 



ADDRESS. 17 

supported by all the appliances of Oriental servitude and 
superstition, without literature, without freedom, or the 
hope or desire of freedom ; while Rome, on the West, 
was struggling for existence on the Italian peninsula, and 
the pall of barbarism was spread oyer all the rest of the 
continent of Europe ; five or six centuries before the birth 
of Christ ; more than twenty centuries before America 
was discovered ; there arose and grew up a peoj^le and 
nation whose achievements in literature, oratory, poetry, 
philosophy, art, government — in all the arts of War and 
Peace — not only made them the foremost people of that 
age, but have extended and perpetuated their influence 
through all the phases of mediseval and modern history 
and civilization, and throughout all the cultivated nations 
of the modern world ; — this, I conceive to be the most 
remarkable single fact, arising from what we are accus- 
tomed to call natural causes, which the whole history of 
man presents. But of all this no part caii be touched 
here. 

Great in all ways as is the fact of Ancient Greece — 
her valor, her art, all the forms of her social achieve- 
ments — it is to the perfection of her language and liter- 
ature that all the cultivated world has done its heartiest 
homage. In what then, I repeat, consists the value of 
the Greek language as an instrument of educational 
training for us ? 

It consists, first, in the fact that the Greek language is 
an ancient language ; in the remoteness of the period 
in which it arose and took its form. The Greeks were 
the first people who played a conspicuous part in history, 
whose social life, politics, manners, literature, were the 
OTitgrowth and product of human reason and the spirit 
of freedom. The controlling forces which moved and in- 



18 ADDRESS. 

spired the people who gave Greece her character, and 
moulded her destinies, were reason and the love of free- 
dom, personal, social, political freedom. But this lan- 
guage, in addition to being the mould and form which 
reason and the spirit of freedom first took, was also in a 
strict sense a growth, the result of the fusion, contact, in- 
termingling of distinct dialects, the related parts or frag- 
ments of an organic whole. 

No one who has ever examined this subject has failed 
to see that the Greek language and its literature were, in 
the completest and most absolute sense, growths — as nat- 
ural and original as any growths of physical nature. The 
Greeks had no models. Their language, except in its 
most primitive forms, their literature in all its great forms, 
were original productiorls of their own. The three great 
factors of the language — the light and rude ^olic, the 
strong and grave Doric, the soft and liquid Ionic — each 
had its separate growth, influenced and determined simply 
by the great natural environments and conditions, of race, 
locality, and intercourse. 

In its most perfect development, the Greek language 
presents, therefore, a linguistic growth which in the main,- 
and to a degree greater than any other, was natural and 
regular, according to the genius and spirit of one people, 
yet not confined to one mould or form, but enriched and 
enlarged by the mingling of three principal, well-defined, 
well-developed dialects. 

Not only was this the manner in which the Greek lan- 
guage arose, but in this process of growth, its structure 
and vocabulary became to the highest degree artistic, flex- 
ible and rich. Nothing here is more remarkable than its 
purity, its freedom from foreign influences. Leaving out 
of view those questions concerning the origin and original 



ADDRESS. 19 

relations of the different members of the great family of 
Indo-European languages — questions about which only 
learned specialists in j)hilology can be profitably concern- 
ed — it may be safely said that no language, ancient or 
modern, is so original, so completely developed according 
to the spirit and genius of the people who used it. 

To all these characteristics are to be added its beauty 
and power, and their development into the Greek litera- 
ture. 

It is difficult, of course, to demonstrate the truth of 
what has just been laid down, to those who choose to 
deny or discredit it, but among those who profess them- 
selves competent to judge, or among those whom others 
would judge comjaetent, I know of no important dissent 
from the claims which have now been made, namely, the 
pre-eminence of the Greek language among all languages 
in purity, power, and beauty, and the pre-eminence of the 
Greek literature among all literatures, in the perfection 
of its style and form. 

And if it be true that the Greek language presents 
these qualities ; if it is in a superior degree original and 
underived ; in growth and development regular and nc^n- 
ral ; in vocabulary and form rich, flexible, powerful and 
artistic, then surely its study is adapted to the work of 
training and educating the human faculties in the knowl- 
edge and practice of language, the art of expression in 
language, which we have already seen, is at once the 
condition and means of the exercise of intellectual power. 

The fact that it is an ancient language, the growth of 
an age when what we may call the intellectual order of 
the world was fixed, when the laws and methods of intel- 
lectual work and action were first determined, adds di- 
rectly to its value as an implement of education. It is a 



20 ADDRESS. 

completed growth. Its fairest flowers, its richest fruits, 
appeared many centuries ago. There in the distant past 
it lies, the fair perfected growth of the young intellect of 
the world ; product of intellectual forces which are still, 
always and everywhere, the source and inspiration of lit- 
erature and science ; true to nature and fact ; pervaded, 
moulded, lit up by the very spirit of intellectual freedom, 
love of knowledge, and the sense of beauty. 

To study Greek is, then, to study the sources of artis- 
tic, cultivated language ; to study a language more, origi- 
nal in its forms and structure, more powerful, more sub- 
tle, more expressive, than any living spoken language, as 
well as a literature unequalled in its exhibition of the 
capacities of human language. 

For if the Greek language presents these advantages 
for the study of language — its origin, growth and 
structure — the Greek literature, the best products of this 
language in the period of its most perfect development, 
presents in form and style the highest specimens of the 
literary art. Here I desire to state the claims of Greek 
literature with accuracy and moderation. I do not mean 
by any means, and I do not understand the classicists so- 
called anywhere to mean, that Greek literature expresses 
the best results of human thought in science, morality, 
philosojjhy or religion. It does not ; it could not. Greek 
literature was produced in an age of the most limited 
knowledge of the great subjects which most concern men 
in modern times. It is not in Greek literature of the 
classic period that we find what may be called the best 
results of human thought as applied to the material world 
of nature and life, or to those problems which concern 
the present moral duties or the future destiny of man. 
The materials of modern literature are incomparably 



ADDRESS. 21 

richer, the results of modern thought are immeasurably 
more valuable and beneficent. 

Let us concede and assert all this ; yet it remains true 
that the Greek mind was unequalled in its mastery of all 
the materials of knowledge then available for the discov- 
ery of the rules of thought, the absolute and true intel- 
lectual methods ; while in a certain sense of proportion, a 
due measure and moderation of spirit in all their literary 
work, they have succeeded in giving unquestioned rules 
to all who have come after them. " For," says Lessing, 
" it was the privilege of the ancients never in any matter 
to do too much or too little." The result has been that 
while as sources of knowledge on most themes which con- 
cern the world of modern thought and life, Greek literature 
offers comparatively little, yet as the means of instruction 
in methods of thought, of composition, of literary arrange- 
ment, especially of all the methods and arts of exi^ression 
in written or spoken language, unfailing and absolute 
literary taste, no literature is comparable to the Greek. 

Here we find again the qualities which we most need 
in the work of education — not the facts of science, nor 
the marvellous laws of the material world which modern 
science has discovered, not the final truths or highest 
principles of morality and religion of which the modern 
world is possessed ; but a language, a form of speech, a 
method of intellectual work, of literary production, which 
has since stood to the whole literary world, including 
every cultivated age and nation, as the best example and 
final test of literary excellence ; for I think the French 
critic, Ampere, expressed the feeling and judgment of 
those who have most deeply studied many literatures, in 
saying that whenever he came back from other studies 
and reopened Homer or Sophocles, he was forced to ex- 



22 ADDRESS. 

claim — Voila la beaute veritahle et souveraine : jamais il 
ne s 'est ecrit rien de pareil chez les hommes. 

I wish to avoid all mei^e eulogy here, and I take leave 
to point out specifically where and in what, I think, lie 
these excellences of Greek literature. 

There were in Greece, as there are now, four great di- 
visions of literary work and activity, which engaged the 
highest efforts of the greatest minds — poetry, history, 
oratory, philosophy. 

Now in each of these departments Greek literature 
presents one or two names to which I think succeeding 
ages offer no equals. Consider, first, the poetry of 
Homer, undoubtedly the most valuable poetical monu- 
ment the world contains. The two great Homeric poems 
are concerned with themes apparently the most remote 
from the modern world. The characters are grotesque 
deities and legendary heroes. The scenes and events lie 
in the cloudland of mythology and tradition, having little 
foundation in historic fact. The sentiments of the poems 
are often, perhaps generally, those of a society but par- 
tially touched by the softening, humanizing influences of 
what we call civilization ; yet these poems speak the same 
voice to all ages. They are simple pictures of human 
action and feeling ; they do not seek primarily to teach 
morals, religion or politics. Their interest is purely 
dramatic ; but no one who has ever read Homer intelli- 
gently, in the original, has failed to find here, to a degree 
quite unequalled elsewhere, the four qualities which Mr. 
Arnold has enumerated — rapidity of movement, plain- 
ness and directness of style, plainness and directnesss of 
ideas, and nobleness of treatment. These are, I suppose 
one may say with confidence, the very highest qualities of 
narrative or ejaic poetry. So that if it is desirable that 



ADDKJCSS. 23 

our youth should be taught by an acquaintance with the 
highest examples of such poetry, it is clear that the poems 
of Homer must be studied. 

So in tragedy or tragic poetry, iEschylus stands in a 
similar relation to all the literature which has since been 
produced. Not only was he the founder and father of 
Greek Tragedy as a form of literary production, he was 
likewise, the inventor of the drama as a form of imitative 
Art, and his themes, his ideas, his tone, the color of his 
genius and spirit as now shown in all his principal works, 
are lofty, pure, earnest, in the highest degree. There are 
passages in the Eumenides and Prometheus Bound which 
as specimens of literary art and intellectual power, as well 
as of high and stern morality, are worthy to stand as 
models forever. Not to know iEschylus is not to know 
what was first in time, and is perhaps highest in concep- 
tion and style in the whole range of tragic poetry and 
dramatic art. 

And undoubtedl}^ in the art of historical writing, in 
historical narrative, or disquisition, or judgment, there is 
no name that can be placed on an equal elevation with 
Thucydides. He was the first writer who treated history 
philosophically, that is, regarded its outward features' as 
the strict result of causes which it is the historian's proper 
task to discover and point out. His tone is judicial and 
elevated, his analysis deep and penetrating. But I can 
never help thinking that the literary merits of his work 
form his highest title to our study and reverence. He is 
a great example of Lessing's remark already quoted. His 
principles of art were so fundamental that no feelings 
aroused by the events of his narratives ever betray or 
hurry him beyond the just limit of expression or judgment. 

His relations, too, to the growth of Greek prose give a 



24 ADDKESS. 

special value to his writings as studies in language. He 
wrote in what has been called an " ante-grammatical age," 
and he fixed as much as any one the rules and canons of 
artistic prose writing of which he was at once author and 
exemplar. 

But in the great art of oratory, the most powerful and 
attractive of all forms of literary art, Greek literature 
presents Demosthenes. For my own part, there is hardly 
a career in statesmanship, and the conduct and shaping of 
public affairs, which seems to me better deserving the 
study of the statesman of to-day. The period in which he 
lived, the forces with which he dealt, the results which 
depended on the events with which he was connected, form 
a chapter of political history of the highest intrinsic inter- 
est and value. His public aims and methods, his .personal 
and public character, his devotion to high principles and 
ideals of duty, make him an historical figure worthy of 
perpetual observation and admiration. But in the field 
of oratory, in the preparation and delivery of public 
speeches, lies his pre-eminent claim to greatness. Here it 
is hard to say which of many supreme merits he exhibits 
in highest degree. A severity of style which never fails, 
a subordination of all the arts and devices of rhetoric to 
the orator's great purpose ; but with all this, elevation of 
sentiment, power of demonstration, wealth of illustration, 
passion of appeal and persuasion, patriotic ardor — a com- 
bination to which no trait of power or beauty seems want- 
ing, and which apparently exhausts the capacity of lan- 
guage ■ — this is the oratory of Demosthenes. 

In the field of philosophical speculation, the search for 
ideal truth, logical, metaphysical, ethical, psychological, 
and political, Greek literature has given us Plato. And 
of the works of Plato it may be said that, apart from the 



ADDRESS. 25 

thought which they contain, they are true literary master- 
pieces. 

Of Phato's philosophical speculations and conclusions, 
this also is true, that the impulse which he gave to specu- 
lative thought, and the methods he pursued have left the 
deepest traces in all subsequent thought and literature. 
" Plato," says Emerson, " is jDhilosophy, and philosophy, 
Plato, — at once the glory and the shame of mankind, 
since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any 
idea to his categories." 

Then came Aristotle, who covered the whole range of 
thought of his age, carrying speculative philosophy to its 
highest results, and devising and stating the methods and 
laws of all intellectual inquiry. He was also the first 
writer who can be said to have written the history of 
philosophy, while in the art of classification, in accumula- 
ting and systematizing knowledge or facts, and in the 
scientific method of treating all subjects, in analytic in- 
sight and power, he remains still the first in time, and in 
many respects the greatest of the world's teachers. 

Such, in a meagre and most limited statement, are some 
of the contents of Greek literature. In all the depart- 
ments of intellectual exertion to which they severally 
belong, these are the original sources, the earliest great 
examples. Their influence, as a matter of fact, has been 
powerful and continuous in all the intellectual history 
and progress of the world. All literature of value, as a 
matter of fact, has been strongly affected by the Greek 
authors whom I have named. However much the objects 
and materials of literary art have changed, however many 
of the conclusions or teachings of Greek philosophy have 
been disproved and rejected, the intellectual processes and 



26 ADDUESS. 

literary standards which Greek literature first illustrated 
and enforced, have survived and are in use now. 

No man, then, can aspire to become cultivated in these 
leading departments of intellectual effort, or to become 
familiar with the progress and results of the intellectual his- 
tory of mankind, unless he deeply studies Greek literature. 

And if to this consideration we add what is indisputable 
and obvious, that translations can never perfectly, and 
rarely adequately reproduce the meanings and impressions 
of the original works, the conclusion cannot be avoided 
that an acquaintance with Greek literature, through a 
knowledge of the Greek language, is and must be, whether 
required by schools and colleges or not, an indispensable 
means for laying the foundation of the broadest culture, 
the most useful and effective mental training. The Greek 
language and literature are thus, whether we will or not, 
a "fundamental requirement," "without which," in the 
words of Mr, Adams, " no one can pursue a specialty to 
(the highest) advantage." 

As soon as one really reflects on this matter, and se- 
riously inquires what is, by its nature and office, " funda- 
mental," to a high, or strong, or useful, or adeqviate train- 
ing and culture for the work of modern life, he finds that 
by no convention of scholars so-called, in deference to no 
long-cherished superstition, through the worship of no 
" fetish," but by a necessity arising from the plain facts 
of the world's intellectual and literary history, the Greek 
language and literature are the only key to much that is 
the most valuable mtellectual and literary treasure of the 
world. 

But not the least, perhaps the greatest sujoeriority of 
Greek literature is in what is usually called its style — the 
quality which Mr. Lowell has lately reminded us, is " the 



ADDRESS. 



27 



only warrant of permanence in literature." By this 
term is not meant the mere artful use or arrangement 
of words and sentences, or any devices or conceits of ex- 
pression. Greek literary art is moral in its qualities. It 
consists in the simple honest adaptation of language to its 
proper uses and ends. We hear often such phrases as 
" classic tinsel," " classic formalism." No one who knows 
Greek literature has failed to see that Greek literary art, 
Greek literary taste proscribed, in theory and practice, all 
mere ornaments of language, all verbal tricks or expedi- 
ents, and sought to present thought in natural, simple, no- 
ble forms alone. To speak or write classically is, in 
truth, to speak or write, above all things, with the most 
direct reference to the simple setting forth of thought ; of 
tinsel, of formalism, Homer, iEschylus, Thucydides, De- 
mosthenes, Plato, give us absolutely nothing. 

But the Greek literary spirit went deeper than this. It 
imposed and developed a moderation of tone, a justness of 
judgment, a measure and repose of feeling, a proportion 
of treatment on all subjects, for which there is no other 
present term of description than classical. 

Here, then, are the studies and examples which are fit 
to train the youth of all times and nations in the noblest 
forms and uses of language, to teach and enforce true lit- 
erary art and taste, — which ever consists in using lan- 
o-uao-e for the natural, direct, attractive, and powerful ex- 
pression of ideas. 

I state these results of an examination of the Greek lan- 
guage and literature, and the most ample proofs might be 
given by examples if time sufficed. But perhaps I may 
be allowed to illustrate the genuine simplicity and direct- 
ness of Greek thought, even in poetry, in contrast with 
modern, by a single example. 



28 ADDRESS. 

The passage near tlie close of the 18th Book of the 
Iliad, which describes the newly-forged armor of Achilles, 
the workmanship of Vulcan, and the gift of Thetis to the 
ideal martial hero of the Greeks, has long been reckoned 
one of the finest in classical literature. In closing his 
famous 7th of March speech, Mr. Webster, alluding to 
the vast extent of our territory, said : " We realize on a 
mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental 
border of the buckler of Achilles : — 

" ' Now, the broad shield complete, the artist crowned 
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round ; 
In living silver seemed the waves to roll, 
And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole.'" 

This is Pope's paraphrase, I will not say translation, 
of two lines of Homer's description of the shield of 
Achilles, and it is a striking illustration of what Mr. Ar- 
nold calls Pope's artificial, intellectualized, literary man- 
ner and language. 

Now in contrast with this, let one read the original 
lines of Homer : 

'Ev d'eri'&ei. noTa/xoio fieya a^evog 'Queavolo, 
uvTvya TTup ■kv/j.uttjv auKeog nvna ttoljjtolo, 

and he will know what is meant when it is said that sim- 
plicity and plainness of expression are found in the high- 
est degree in Homer, and how by the simplest means the 
Greek genius reached the highest and noblest results in 
poetry. 

Mr. Adams gives us a list of English authors whom he 
holds up as worthy to supersede the Greek authors, who 
now represent for us the Greek language and literature, 
but there are not more than two or three among them all, 
who did not owe the training which gave them their mas- 
tery of the English language to studies of the classical Ian- 



ADDRESS. 29 

guages and literatures. This is true, equally true, of any 
similar list of great writers in German and French. 
Goethe was a German-Greek. Voltaire was a French- 
Greek. I do not mean to say that in later times great 
writers have not appeared who, out of the existing mate- 
rials of modern languages, have wrought the most valuable 
results, without any direct knowledge of the classical lan- 
guages. But I lay it down as a truth which cannot be 
shaken, that no man ignorant of Greek can read any great 
English, or German, or French author — for example, 
Shakespeare or Milton, Pascal or Voltaire, Goethe or even 
Schiller — with the same pleasure and full appreciation as 
if he had been once trained to a fair knowledge of the 
Greek language. To confine our studies to modern 
tongues, is to cut ourselves off from an acquaintance with 
the sources of a great part of the richness, the power and 
the beauty of all that is great in modern literature. I 
trust I am not, more than Mr. Adams, pleased with liter- 
ary formalism and tinsel, or the poor imitations of Demos- 
thenes and Cicero which he satirizes. I think, plain, di- 
rect, honest English is the highest need of our times in 
language and literature. The words of St. Paul are ap- 
plicable here : "I had rather speak five words with my 
understanding than ten thousand words in a tongue." 
Better the plainest, most untaught English than all formal 
imitations of the highest models. But to follow Homer, 
to know and be influenced by liomer, is to speak with a 
directness and simplicity which scarcely any modern writer 
would dare to observe. To write as Thucydides wrote, to 
speak as Demosthenes spoke, is to reject ornament, to 
spurn verbal cunning and contrivances, and to hold the 
whole mind intent only on the clearest, directest expres- 
sion of thought. A true revival of the classic spirit, a 



30 



ADDRESS. 



true renaissance, would give us back some part of the aus- 
tere beauty, the severe simplicity, and the majestic power 
which modern literature generally lacks. 

And Greek discipline and taste were not confined 
among the Greeks — in their nature they could not be 
confined — to letters alone ; they displayed themselves 
not less notably in architecture, painting and sculpture. 
The only great sculpture which the world possesses to- 
day, 1 think it correct to say, is Greek — the product 
either of ancient Greek hands, or of those of later days 
who caught their whole spirit and power from studies of 
Greek art. Michael Angelo was as true a Greek in spirit 
as Phidias or Ictinus ; and his sculptures which one sees 
now in Italy are simply the works of a great Italian- 
Greek of the fifteenth century. 

When, therefore, Mr. Adams declares that he prefers the 
German tongue and its literature to the Greek, " whether 
viewed as a thing of use, as an accomplishment, or as 
a source of pleasure," I can only reply that as a matter 
of fact, the German tongue and its literature, like all the 
cultivated modern tongues and literatures, is widely and 
deeply pervaded by the influence of Greek and classical 
studies. Goethe, its greatest literary name, whom Mr. 
Adams declares " the equal, at least, of Sophocles," was 
as true a Greek as Michael Angelo ; and it is Goethe, too, 
who has said, " I wish all success to those who are for 
preserving to the literature of Greece and Rome, its pre- 
dominant place in education." 

Mr. Adams, throughout his address, proclaims his own 
ignorance of Greek. The weight of his charge against 
Harvard is that it " compelled him directly and indirectly 
to devote the best part of his school life to acquiring a 



ADDRESS. ol 

confessedly superficial knowledge of two dead languages." 
Pie declares that at Harvard College thirty years ago, " a 
limp superficiality was all-pervasive " ; and as the result, 
he says : " I have now forgotten the Greek alphabet, and 
I cannot read all the Greek characters if I open my 
Homer." I am bound, I suppose, to accept these state- 
ments as to Mr. Adams's attainments in Greek, though I 
find it difficult to understand how one who, as he himself 
states, " studied Greek with patient fidelity," and who de- 
clares that " there are not many modern graduates who 
can say as I can, that they have, not without enjoyment, 
read the Iliad through in the original, from its first line to 
its last," can also say, " I have now forgotten the Greek 
alphabet." 

But if the time given by Mr. Adams to Greek had been 
given to German, if his study of German had been charac- 
terized by a " limp superficiality," and if now he had for- 
gotten the German alphabet and could not read all the 
German characters if he opened his Goethe, does Mr. 
Adams think he would have been better prepared for the 
work of modern life ? Mr. Adams's positions here seem 
strangely and carelessly inconsistent. He declares that 
he never had more than " a confessedly superficial know- 
ledge " of Greek, and that even that has faded out till he 
has now forgotten the Greek characters, and from that 
premise he proceeds to the conclusion, so far as his indi- 
vidual experience goes, that the compulsory study of Greek 
should be abandoned by our schools and colleges, and 
some modern language be allowed to take its place, at 
the option of the student. But if the failure of Greek to 
prepare him for modern life was due to the " limp super- 
ficiality " of the instruction and requirements of the 
Harvard of his day, does he think a similar method in 



32 ADDRESS. 

German would have had better results ? Of course, he 
does not. Mr. Adams justly anathematizes superficiality 
in anything as " contemptible as well as dangerous, and 
apt to invite defeat." It is fair, then, to ask Mr. Adams 
what right the failure of the Greek of Harvard thirty 
years ago to accomplish desired results in his case gives 
him to conclude that Greek rightly taught, or, to use his 
own words, "Greek really studied, lovingly learned," 
would not accomplish all that a college "fundamental" 
ought to accomplish ? 

Does Mr. Adams think that the mere fact that German 
or French may be chosen by the student in place of Greek, 
would change the " limp superficiality" which he charges 
updn the Harvard of his day, into a " scope and thorough- 
ness " of instruction and attainment, to repeat his own 
words, "which should set at defiance the science of cram- 
ming ? " It is surely hard to see why German should be 
taught with greater thoroughness than Greek in Harvard 
or other colleges, and unless such is the result, it is hard 
to see what gain could come in this respect from admitting 
German to an equality with Greek as a college "funda- 
mental." 

But at this point I am glad to express my agreement 
with Mr. Adams in all he says or can say of the duty of 
thoroughness, and of the absolute demand for better, 
more thorough, more inspiring instruction in Greek, as 
well as in all languages. The real force of Mr. Adams's 
challenge and arraignment of Greek lies, I think, in the 
degree of truth which most college graduates will find in 
his description of the methods and standards of instruction 
in that language. I have said that I do not believe Mr. 
Adams's strictures of Harvard are accurate or just in de- 
gree. My own observation leads me to think that Greek 



ADDRESS. £>3 

is at least taught as well as German in our schools and 
colleges, but that a great and in some respects a radical 
change is needed in our methods of instruction in all the 
languages — ■ a change which may be generally described 
as from an artificial to a natural method, from a predom- 
inating attention to matters of syntax and grammar to an 
effort to teach a better knowledge of the language as a 
vehicle of thought and a more adequate appreciation and 
enjoyment of the literature which it embodies. 

When Mr. Adams gives us what he represents as the 
experiences of the Adams family for four generations, he 
might be regarded as speaking with authority. But the 
Adams family belongs to the public, and the lessons to be 
drawn from the history and experiences of its members 
are not confined to such as those who are lineal represent- 
atives of that family may choose to set forth, but they 
are such only as the facts of their history establish. 

It may be remarked that by recalling the fact that John 
Adams himself, near the close of his long life, was unqual- 
ifiedly convinced of the pre-eminent value of the study of 
Greek, so that he specially provided, in those closing years, 
in founding the academy which bears his name, for a 
"schoolmaster learned in the Greek and Roman lan- 
guages," as well as to some other very characteristic pro- 
visions which he made, intended to secure thoroughness in 
the Greek and Hebrew languages in that academy ; Mr. C. 
F. Adams, Jr., gives us the most convincing proof possible 
of the value which John Adams deliberately set upon his 
own classical training. To be sure, our present Mr. Ad- 
ams tells us that this was " bowing low before the fetish;" 
that " instead of taking a step forward, the old man actu- 
ally took one backward " ; and that " this was fetish-wor- 



34 ADDRESS. 

ship, pure and simple." And he then brings forward, as 
the only evidences of the correctness of such opinions, two 
passages from the correspondence of John Adams, written 
respectively in 1813 and 1814, in one of which, at the age 
of seventy-eight, John Adams tells Thomas Jefferson that 
he had recently been read'ing Isocrates and Dionysius Hal- 
icarnassensis, and that he found that " if he looked a word 
to-day, in less than a week he had to look it again," and 
that " it was to little better purpose than writing letters on 
a pail of water " ; and in the other of which, in his seventy- 
ninth year, he writes to Jefferson, that thirty years before 
he read Plato, and learned little or nothing from him. 

He then dismisses the great patriot and statesman, with 
the remark: "As a sufficiently cross-examined witness on 
the subject of Greek literature, I think John Adams may 
now quit the stand " ! 

I do not think this will be likely to lead the world to 
forget that the life of John Adams was one of incessant 
labor and immeasurable service for his country, covering 
a period of considerably more than a half-century of our 
most eventful history ; that he received a classical educa- 
tion at Harvard ; that even at the age of seventy-nine he 
was not obliged to confess that he had forgotten the Greek 
alphabet ; but throughout his laborious and anxious life 
he never forgot or abandoned his classical studies, and at 
last gave, as we have seen, the most signal proof of his 
estimate of their value to himself by founding an Academy 
in which the study of Greek and Latin was made "funda- 
mental," with Hebrew, " if thought advisable." 

The real life-long testimony of John Adams is to the 
superior value of classical studies. There is no doubt that 
familiarity with the French language would have been in- 
valuable to John Adams in his diplomatic career, but he 



ADDRESS. 35 

had in its stead that stoutness of spirit and flexibility of 
mind which enabled him at forty-two to undertake the 
task of learning Frencli, and to accomplish as a diploma- 
tist at the council-boards of Europe what he himself al- 
ways regarded as the greatest triumphs of his life. 

I know no reason why the education of Harvard is not 
entitled, on all grounds, to regard John Adams, as he evi- 
dently regarded himself, as its debtor for the foundation 
of that mental equipment which made him as Jefferson 
describes him in the debates which led to our Declaration 
of Independence, " our Colossus on the floor. Not grace- 
ful, not elegant, not always fluent in his public addresses, 
he yet came out with a power, both of thought and ex- 
pression, which moved us from our seats." 

Mr. Webster in his oration on Adams and Jefferson 
says: "They were scholars, ripe and good scholars; 
widely acquainted with ancient as well as modern litera- 
ture, and not altogether uninstructed in the deeper sci- 
ences I would hazard the opinion that, if we 

could ascertain all the causes which gave them eminence 
and distinction in the midst of the great men with 
whom they acted, we should find not among the least, 
their early acquisitions in literature, the resources which 
it furnished, the promptitude and facility which it commu- 
nicated, and the wide field it opened for analogy and illus- 
tration ; giving them thus, on every subject, a larger view 
and a broader range, as well for discussion as for the gov- 
ernment of their own conduct." 

I set the testimony of John Adams himself, and the 
judgment of Daniel Webster as to the sources of his power 
in public life, against the conclusions which Mr. C. F. 
Adams, Jr., would have us draw. 

Of John Quincy Adams, his grandson says , "I would 



36 ADDRESS. 

for the sake of my argument, give much could I correctly 
weigh what he owed during his public life to the living 
languages he had picked up in Europe, against what he 
owed to the requirements of Harvard College." I think 
the friends of classical education might safely join in this 
wish. Very sure I am that the accidents of boyhood, what 
our author twice calls " the languages which he picked up 
in Europe " had no considerable part in giving to John 
Quincy Adams that marvellous mental equipment which 
made him, as his grandson justly thinks, more than the 
equal of any one whom he ever met in debate. I do not 
believe such a training was "picked up" from any source 
or in any sense. I believe it was the result of careful, la- 
borious training in which classical studies did their share. 
His attainments in the continental languages of Europe, 
like all our most valuable acquisitions, were the result of 
thorough, systematic and long-continued studies. They 
were undoubtedly of the greatest value to him in personal 
intercourse as a diplomatist in Europe, a period, however, 
of only fifteen years. ' For a period of fifteen years, then, 
in a public career of more than half a century, the modern 
languages were, in the work of foreign diplomacy, very 
valuable instruments in the hands of John Quincy Adams. 
Let all this be conceded ungrudgingly. But in the more 
than third of a century which lies outside of his residence 
aboard, he was a Senator of the United States, Professor 
of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Harvard, nominated 
and confirmed a Judge of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, eight years Secretary of State, President 
of the United States, closing the longest, and in many 
ways the most remarkable public career in our his- 
tory by seventeen years of service as a member of the 
National House of Representatives. What were the infiu- 



ADDRESS. 37 

ences which most strongly sustained that arduous and 
prolonged career ? Let John Quincy Adams answer for 
himself. In 1809, at the close of his term of service as 
Professor of Harvard College, he used these parting words 
to his classes ; — words which for true pathos and eloquence 
are not easily matched in American oratory — " If at this 
moment, in which so many circumstances concur to give 
solemnity to our feelings, I may be permitted to use with 
you the freedom, as I feel for you the solicitude of a par- 
ent, and to express in the form of advice, those ardent 
wishes for your future happiness, which beat with every 
pulsation of my heart, I would entreat you to cherish and 
to cultivate in every stage of your lives that taste for lit- 
erature and science, which is first sought here as in their 
favorite abodes. I would urge it upon you, as the most 
effectual means of extending your respectability and use- 
fulness in the world. I would press it with still more ear- 
nestness upon you as an inexhaustible source of enjoyment 

and of consolation At no hour of your life will 

the love of letters ever oppress you as a burden, or fail 
you as a resource. In the vain and foolish exultation of 
the heart, which the brighter prospects of life will some- 
times excite, the pensive portress of science shall call you 
back to the sober pleasures of her holy cell. In the mor- 
tifications of disappointment her soothing voice shall whis- 
per security and peace. In social converse with the 
mighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under 
the galling sensations of dependence upon the mighty liv- 
ing of the present; and in your struggles with the world, 
should a crisis ever occur, when even friendship may 
deem it prudent to desert you ; when even your country 
may seem ready to abandon herself and you ; when even 
priest and Levite shall come and look on you, and pass b}^ on 



38 ADDRESS. 

the other side, seek refuge, my unfailing friends, and be as- 
sured you will find it in the friendship of Laelius and Scipio ; 
in the patriotism of Cicero, Demosthenes and Burke." 

Some of Mr. Adams's most dogmatic expressions of 
opinion I find it difiicult even to understand, much more to 
account for, and I must, at least, express my astonishment 
that Mr. Adams should say of John Quincy Adams, that 
" as an imitator he was as bad as Chatham. More could 
not be said. That much he owed to Harvard College and 
its little Latin and less Greek." And this is said of the 
most magnificent orator who ever swayed the British Par- 
liament ! " As bad as Chatham " ! of whom Prof. Good 
rich says : ''It would be difficult, in the whole range of 
oratory, to find more perfect models of style and diction for 
the study and imitation of the young orator. . . . Noth- 
ing can be more easy, varied and natural than the style of 
his speeches. There is no mannerism about them. They 
have this infallible mark of genius, they make every one 
feel, that if j)laced in like circumstances, he would have 
said exactly the same things in the same manner.""* But 
I trust it is superfluous to defend or praise the style of 
Lord Chatham. 

Perhaps, however, the most remarkable passage in Mr. 
Adams's address is this : " It is asserted that the compul- 
sory study of Greek has not been discontinued in foreign 
colleges ; and yet, as we all know, the students of those 
colleges have an ever-increasing mastery of the living 
tongues. I do not propose to enter this branch of the 
discussion. I do not profess to be informed as to what the 
universities of other lands have done. ... I hold it sufiici- 
ent for my pm-pose to reply that we have to deal with Ameri- 
ca, and not with Germany, or France, or Great Britain." 

* Goodrich's British Eloquence, p. 75. 



ADDRESS. 3D 

This is coming dangerously near, I think, to the position of 
our American politician to whom Mr. Adams alludes, who, 
in recent financial discussions, in answer to arguments di-^wn 
from the experience of European nations, declared " he did 
not care for ' abroad ' ; he was legislating for America." 

But I do care for " abroad," and so, 1 suppose, do all 
reasonable men. It happens that the most thorough and 
direct test of which we have any knowledge, of the com- 
parative value of the classical and non-classical training in 
preparatory schools, has lately been made in Prussia. 

In Prussia there exist, side by side, two classes of 
schools, called Gymnasia and Realschulen. The former 
prescribe a classical course of study ; the lattei' dispense 
wholly with Greek, reduce the time given to Latin nearly 
one-half, introduce English, give more attention to Gei-man, 
double the time devoted to French, more than double that 
given to physical and natural sciences, and increase by one- 
half the time given to mathematics. It will thus be seen 
that the Prussian Realschulen do what Mr. Adams would 
have Harvard do, or more precisely, they do what Mr. 
Adams would have Harvard permit its students to do, at 
their option — omit Greek entirely, reduce Latin to mere 
rudimentary acquirements, and devote the time thus gained 
to French and German, or other modern languages. 

In 1870, at the instance of not a few who looked as 
Mr. Adams does upon Greek and Latin studies, the Prus- 
sian Minister of Public Instruction, by royal Decree, con- 
ferred on Prussian subjects who had completed the fidl 
course of instruction in the Realschulen of the first rank, 
the right to enter any Prussian university for the purpose 
of studying mathematics, the physical and natural sciences, 
or the modern languages — a privilege heretofore only 
enjoyed by the graduates of the Prussian Gymnasia. 



40 ADDRESS. 

In 1880, when this experiment had been in operation 
over eight years, the faculty of the University of Berlin 
presented an opinion or report to the Minister of Public 
Instruction upon the results of the admission of graduates 
of Realschulen to the University. It would be difficult, I 
think, to have devised a more direct or more impartial test 
of the results in mental training of the classical and non- 
classical systems of preparatory education. It will be ob- 
served that the Realschuler were admitted to the Univer- 
sity courses in mathematics, physical aud natural sciences, 
and the modern languages ; in other words, to the higher 
courses of study, in the very branches to which the time 
of the Realschulen had been chiefly given. Every advan- 
tage which could come, therefore, from a special training, 
so-called, for the higher courses of study, lay with the 
Realschuler members of the University in the courses to 
which they are admitted. 

The faculty of the University of Berlin at the time of 
the report to which I now refer, consisted of thirty-six 
members, including such well-known names as Curtius, 
Zeller, Mommsen and Hofmann. Summarily stated, the 
professors and instructors in mathematics, in astronomy, in 
chemistry, and in zoology bear uniform testimony to the 
superior capacity and success of the graduates of the Gym- 
nasia in the pursuit of those branches of University study. 
But what is more significant for our present purposes, the 
instructors in the modern languages, j)articularly Pi'ofessor 
Zupitza, instructor in the English language and literature, 
and Professor MuUenhoff, instructor in the German lan- 
guage and literature, report a distinct superiority of the 
graduates of Gymnasia over the Realschuler in the study 
of these languages. Professor Miillenhoff says : 

" Judging from my experience, it is simply impossible 



ADDRESS. 41 

for one who lias been prepared in the Realschule to acquire 
a satisfactory scientific education. No man acquires it by 
means of the modern languages alone, nor without a solid 
foundation in the training of the Gymnasium." 

Professor tlofmann, whose greatest renown has been 
won in the physical sciences, remarks that, " Students 
from the Realschulen, in consequence of their being con- 
versant with a greater number of facts, outrank as a rule, 
those from the Gymnasia during the experimental exercises 
of the first semester, but that relation is soon reversed, and 
given equal abilities, the latter almost invariably carry off 
the honors in the end, being mentally better trained and 
having acquired in a higher degree the ability to under- 
stand and solve scientific problems." 

Professor Ilofmann, likewise, in his inaugural address 
on assuming the Rectorship of the University of Berlin in 
October, 1880, declares that " all efforts to find a substi- 
tute for the classical languages, whether in mathematics, in 
the modern languages, or in the natural sciences, have been 
hitherto unsuccessful, — that after long and vain search, 
we must always come back finally to the result of centu- 
ries of experience, that the surest instrument that can be 
used in training the mind of youth is given us in the 
study of the language, the literature and the works of art 
of classical antiquity."' 

" Idealty in academic study," he observes, " unselfish 
devotion to science for its own sake, and that unshackled 
activity of thought which is at once the condition and con- 
sequence of such devotion, retire more and more into the 
background as the classical groundwork of our mental life 
found in the Gymnasium is withdrawn from the pre-Uni- 
versity course." And he adds : "I have never heard a 
student from the Gymnasium express a wish that he might 



42 ADDRESS. 

have receivBtl his trainuig in a Realschule ; how often, on 
the other hand, have I met with yonng men prepared in 
the Realschule, who grievously regretted that they had 
never had part in the training of the Gymnasium " ! 

It should here be added, that in reply to an official re- 
quest in 1870, for opinions on the admission of graduates 
of Realschulen to the Universities, or to certain courses 
therein, the faculties of all the Prussian Universities be- 
sides that of Berlin, eight in number, gave formal opin- 
ions, most of which were in harmony with those of the 
Berlin faculties. 

Efforts have been made, naturally, to break the force of 
this remarkable testimony, and one writer has ventured to 
assert, first, that the Berlin report " has nothing to do with 
this question " ; and second, that, " upon investigation it 
turns out to be sqnarely on the other side of the point in 
dispute " ! * 

That some of the conditions of this experiment were, of 
necessity, somewhat more favorable to the Gymnasium 
than the Realschule, owing chiefly to the fact that the 
former schools are older, better organized, and better 
equipped, and j)robably draw a larger ratio of their puj)ils 
from the better-educated and more intelligent classes of 
the people, may be conceded. Something, too, may pos- 
sibly be allowed for the predilections, not to say prejudices, 
of the University professors and instructors in favor of the 
schools in which they themselves were trained — though 
of such partiality one surely sees small trace in Mr. Adams 
or his present supporters, — but when all reasonable con- 
cessions of whatever sort have been made, it still remains 
that here, for a period of full eight years, the University 
has been opened to students prepared very nearly, if not 

* Popular Science Monthly, January, 1884. 



ADDRESS. 43 

wholly, on the plan, or by the studies advocated by Mr. 
Adams, for the pursuit of those branches with which all 
their preparatory studies are most closely connected ; and 
that the almost unanimous testimony of those who have 
had charge of the experiment is that the graduates of 
schools where Greek is entirely and Latin nearly omitted, 
and the modern languages substituted, — in other words, 
where the course is non-classical or "modern," — are less 
successful in the pursuit of the studies for which they have 
had special preparatory training than are the graduates of 
schools which retain and enforce the undiminished study 
of Greek and Latin — in other words, a classical course. 

If this is not a conclusive test of the opposing theories 
which we are discussing, I think it may justly be described 
as the most direct and most nearly conclusive experience 
which has yet been secured, and probably as conclusive as 
any likely to be secured so long as the present question 
remains within the range of discussion. To equalize abso- 
lutely all the conditions of such a trial would require us 
either to reverse the past, or to wait for a long period in 
the future before concluding which plan of study to adopt, 
whereas the opponents of a classical course insist that we 
shall take our decision at once, with such lights as we have 
— among which, I repeat, I see none clearer or more 
trustworthy than this Prussian experiment. 

I certainly do not think it will do for Mr. Adams to say 
here, as he does, in answer to arguments derived from the 
experiences of foreign Universities, that " the educational 
and social conditions are not the same here as in those 
countries "; that " our home life is different ; our schools 
are different ; wealth is otherwise distributed." What has 
all this to do with the effect of a given training upon the 
mental powers and capacities of the youth of Prussia or 



44 ADDRESS. 

America ? Does Mr. Adams think the result of classical 
training may be good in the case of Prussian youths and 
bad in the case of American ? Indeed, it is precisely be- 
cause he thinks the present German language and life and 
thought are so much nearer to ours that he would place 
the language and literature of that country on an equality 
with Greek, and yet he says in the same breath in which 
he extols the German language and literature, " I do not 
profess to be informed as to what the universities of other 
lands have done " ! 

I have hitherto spoken exclusively of Greek, because it 
is there that Mr. Adams makes his chief attack. '' Latin," 
he says, " I will not stop to contend over. That is a small 
matter. ... It has its modern uses. Not only is it di- 
rectly the mother tongue of all south-western Europe, but 
it has by common consent been adopted in scientific no- 
menclature. . . . With a knowledge of the rudiments of 
Latin as a requirement for admission to college, I am not 
here to quarrel." 

The unquestionable fact here is that as the study of 
Natural and Moral Philosophy, as well as the theory and 
practice of all the fine arts, began with the Greeks ; the 
Latin language borrowed from the Greek nearly all the 
terms and words which constituted the nomenclature of 
those studies. And the same influence and results j)ervade 
all the modern languages of Europe. 

But not only is this true of studies — sciences and arts 
— which originated with the Greeks, but the sciences 
which have had almost their entire growth in modern 
times are equally linked with the Greek laiiguagf. This 
. is especially true of the nomenclature of botany and chem- 
istry. Linnasus and Lavoisier had direct and almost ex- 



ADDRESS. 45 

elusive recovirse to the Greek for the nomenclature of the 
sciences with whicli their names are associated. And to- 
day, in all the advances of modern science, in those prac- 
tical inventions which in the last thirty years have so 
greatly affected the conditions of human society, the same 
recurrence to the Greek language for the appropriate ter- 
minology has taken place. 

Another leading argument of Mr. Adams for putting 
the modern languages on an equality with the ancient as 
" fundamentals " is that both cannot be learned. Greek 
and Latin, he thinks, for want of time, are incompatible 
with French and German. "My children," he declares, 
" cannot both be fitted for college and taught the modern 
languages." 

I regard this position as wholly incorrect. I know of 
no reason why both French and German and Greek and 
Latin may not be acquired by the youth of this country. 
Without doubt the ready and idiomatic use, for conversa- 
tion, of French and German must, I suppose in all cases, 
come from a residence in the countries where those lan- 
guages are commonly spoken, but a mastery for all the 
purposes of the study and reading of the literature of the 
French and German languages, as well as the quick ac- 
quisition of facility of speech, whenever the op^jortunity 
or need comes, can be obtained in almost any community 
in this country. Latin and Greek are not usually begun, 
and I think should not be begun, before the age of fourteen 
or fifteen. There is no reason of which I am aware why 
French and German may not be constantly studied between 
the ages of eight and fourteen or fifteen ; that is, for a 
term of six or seven years. I think the facilities for such 
a course are to-day quite as abundant as those for the 
study of Latin and Greek. I mean here facilities wliolly 



46 ADDRESS. 

outside of special or private instruction. Except in con- 
versational ease and mastery of French or German, the 
American boy can to-day, as a rule, acquire the same com- 
mand of those languages that John Quincy Adams and 
Charles Francis Adams acquired in their boyhood in Eu- 
rope. He cau become proficient in the reading and writ- 
ing of those languages between the ages of eight and fif- 
teen, before he is called on to begin his Latin and Greek 
— the period of life when the study of French or German 
can by pursued to best tidvantage. 

After graduation the student will have, under this plan, 
what Mr. Adams calls " the tools of his trade," " the ave- 
nues to modern life and thought " : and at the same time 
he will have whatever classical studies can give him. Cer- 
tainly I have never discovered that boys who study French 
and German are more faithful in their work than those 
who study Latin and Greek, or that the teachers of the 
former are in any respect superior to those of the latter. 

It has been my task here to defend the position of Greek 
as an invariable part of our training, as a means which 
never can be omitted in the most useful and practical pre- 
paration for the work of life — modern life — as Mr. 
Adams describes it, " this active, bustling, hard-hitting, 
many-tongued world, caring nothing for authority, and 
little for the past ; but full of its living thought and living 
issues." But I have seen and felt the high utility in life 
of a thorough knowledge of the two great continental 
tongues of Europe. The literatures of France and Ger- 
many have a value which can be hardly overestimated. It 
is true, I could never say as Mr. Adams does, that in rich- 
ness and beauty, I thought the French literature equalled 
the Latin. I certainly never could prefer Montaigne to 



ADDRESS. 47 

Cicero, and 1 should be forced to believe that a different 
estimate must be the result of some degree of ignorance of 
Latin. In all the qualities which make up the value of 
Greek for our educational uses, I feel bound to say I place 
Latin unquestionably next. As a language, merely, as a 
study in the art of expression, it can be placed second only 
to Greek, while as a literature, a record of expressed thought, 
I know no names in French or German literature which in 
a just estimate I think are to be put on the level with 
Cicero, Tacitus, Horace and Virgil. But I do feel that 
the modern languages are apt to be undervalued, and I 
also feel that a larger jjlace is due to these studies in our 
academies and colleges, and that more space can be allowed 
them without injury to the classical course. 

Other considerations and arguments of equal weight and 
value must be omitted here; but I cannot forbear to say 
again, that it is with special regard to the characteristics 
of modern life — the life which now surrounds us, — the 
graphic pictures of which are certainly one of the most 
striking and valuable features of Mr. Adams's address ; it 
is in reference to that life with which we are now associ- 
ated, that I should most earnestly oppcee the proposition 
which Mr. Adams presents ; for I take issue with the idea 
which is suggested by him, when, referring to the func- 
tion and work of the college, he says : " When one is given 
work to do, it is well to j»"epare one's self for that specific 
work." I say, no college student has any " specific work " 
given him, in this sense, to "prepare for." No college 
student knows or can know to what work life will call or 
direct him. Mr. Adams's account of his own career fur- 
nishes a good example of this fact. This is the period 
when, to recur to Mr. Adams's strong phrase, " the best 
thing we can do is to let our minds soak and tan in the 



48 ADDRESS. 

vats of literature." If it be true, as I think it is, of other 
periods of our lives, that 

" The world is too much with us ; late and soon 
Getting and spending, we lay loaste our powers," 

it is important, beyond estimate, that the period of student 
life should be guarded from the premature intrusion of the 
cares and preoccupations which soon enough Yf'Al fix the 
nature and limit of our activities, if they do not narrow the 
outlook and darken the pathway of life. 

Therefore, thefe is in my judgment no study so valuable, 
so exactly adapted, as a preparation for the work to be 
done in public or private life, here in America to-day, as 
the study of the Greek language and literature ; and I 
have the conviction, that this study is, and will be, whether 
it remains a part of our prescribed courses or not, the real 
basis and test of culture, of that mental training and equip- 
ment which distinguishes the educated from the uneducated 
or partly educated, as surely as gold is and will be, whether 
statutes ordain it or not, in the world's real measure of 
pecuniary value. No bustle of business nor din of progress, 
no clamor of politics nor pride of science, I have perfect 
faith, will ever for long overbear the spirit in man to 
which poetry, oratory, philosophy and literature answer; 
and so, finally, it must result that this study now described 
in a few high places, as a " fetish," will be more ardently 
pursued, more wisely taught, more intelligently valued, by 
all those, whether in academical or practical life, who be- 
lieve that the highest secular guaranty of the strength and 
permanence of our civilization is the diffusion of sound 
and thorough liberal education. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



[Professor Edouard Zeller, of Berlin, the author of the following 
article in the Deutsche Rundschau of Berlin, for March, 1884, is 
a German scholar and author, especially fitted to expound the 
general subject of which he here treats. He is the author' of 
Platoiiische Studien and Die Philosophic der Griechen, as well as of 
many other works of learning and scholarship. The whole article, 
which is entitled Ueber die Bedeutung der Sprache und des Sprach- 
unterrichts fur das geistige Leben is of profound interest, but only 
its concluding JDages can be given here.] 



Judging from a superficial view of the matter, it 
might appear as best adapted to the purpose, that the 
mother tongue of the scholar should be selected as 
the general basis for this instruction in languages 
because its grammatical structure and rules, with which 
he is already familiar, might give him a clearer compar- 
ative view, and thus enable him to draw for himself 
illustrations from it. But in reality this is not the case. 
It is a well known fact, that children as a rule are wont 
to display the least interest in the grammatical pursuit 
of their own language. For the mature scholar, who 
investigates scientifically, to be sure, it has a peculiar 
charm; but the average boy cannot conceive why he 
should be made to acquire, through such an irksome task, 
what he in reality supposes himself to know already. 



52 APPENDIX. 

When he is being instructed in a foreign language he 
readily understands, that by this process he is to learn to 
speak it or to read its literature ; his progress displays to 
him an approximation to this aim ; he feels that his 
knowledge is increasing. The reasons for this lie in the 
very nature of the case. But the value of a methodical, 
grammatical instruction in language for the purpose of 
cultivating the mind, as we have seen, consists chiefly 
in this, that the scholar is enabled through it, to master 
the mental faculties, of which language is the expression 
a?td product, mindful of, and in keeping with rules to 
be brought to bear, with accurate distinction of its con- 
stituent elements. To penetrate into the spirit of a lan- 
guage, to speak it correctly and to use it idiomatically, he 
must know its forms and rules, which mean far more than 
a mere practically acquired usage of the same. Again, 
as we can only secure a clear conception of an object by 
comparing it with others, by finding out what this object 
has in common with others, and what peculiar features 
distinguish it from others, we have to apply the same 
principle to matters pertaining to language. The struc- 
ture and peculiarity of our own language is revealed to 
us only by comparison with other languages. Through 
this comparison we learn to distinguish the general drifts 
of thought expressed in every language and their correla- 
tion, from mere words, or forms and compounds ; it is 
evident that such a power of distinction is not attainable 
by one who has acquired a language by mere force of 
habit and practice. Grammar becomes a training in 
logic to us through this comparison. The methodical 
study of a foreign language yields better results for the 
grammatical understanding of one's native tongue, than 
the exclusive study of our own grammar ; and for the 



APPENDIX. 53 

purpose of cultivating the mind generally, comparison 
is far more appropriate, because it involves the necessity 
of tracing ideas from words and of investigating the 
rules from a custom which has become second nature 
to him. " That may be the case," they say, " but if one 
or several foreign languages must be learned, why should 
we choose for this purpose such as cannot be put to 
practical use later on in life, which will soon be forgot- 
ten after leaving school ? Why not French instead of 
Latin, English instead of Greek, both of which must 
be studied afterwards under any circumstances,; or 
why not reverse the order, putting the modern langu- 
ages first and Latin second, and the Greek as an elective 
for those who favor it? But few of our young men 
choose comparative philology as a vocation, and if the 
new educational system is once introduced, there will 
be still fewer of them ; why then burden all the others 
with vocabularies and grammatical rules of languages 
that are no longer spoken by any one, nor even written 
except by men representing this special department ? " 
The majority of those who argue in this manner (their 
number is on the increase, and they are very emphatic,) 
do not seem to be overburdened with their respective 
share of the " oXdi philological cram''' that they brought 
with them from school ; hence they have no reason to 
complain over this burden, and if a distinguished scien- 
tist recently gave us the advice through an article in the 
" Rundschau " to abandon finally the mediaeval stand- 
point of the gymnasia teaching the humanities, he 
probably did not remember in choosing this epithet, 
that classical philology lay idle through the entire mid- 
dle ages ; that its revival gave a death blow to mediae- 
val training, that it paved the way to the science of our 



54 APPENDIX. 

time, including the natural sciences ; that not the ad- 
herents to the old, but the reformers and humanists of 
the sixteenth century cultivated and recommended the 
same, that the founders of the present state of archeol- 
ogy and philology as taught in our gymnasia and uni- 
versities, could never be reproached with favoring the 
views of the middle ages. The system of instruction 
in our humanistic institutions has nothing in common 
with them. To be sure, this does not prove that it 
answers the requirements of our time in every respect. 

If the process of training and instructing youth had 
for its main object to put them in the quickest possible 
manner in possession of suph knowledge as may be re- 
quired for business and routine life, one might perhaps 
share the regret over the fact, that so many of our 
young men spend so much time in learning languages 
which only a few would put to practical use. But this 
question presents a wholly different aspect, when the 
chief mission of our gymnasia is to be found in this, 
that their pupils are not merely to gain general infor- 
mation, but that their minds should be disciplined to 
fit them for a higher intellectual scope of work, for 
scientific treatment of subjects, for vocations in which 
such a previous training is indispensable. To cover 
this ground, the instruction in modern languages would 
have to be imparted according to the same method 
that has been approved in the pursuit of classics. It 
would not suffice to enable the scholars to speak and 
write the foreign language fluently and correctly ; but 
if the cultivating influence of linguistic study is to 
secure and to maintain its claim, one must give them 
as deep an insight into the grammatical and lexico- 
graphic structure as is done and aimed at in the study 



APPENDIX. 00 

of ancient languages. In so doing, however, one would 
soon find out, that the time supposed to be saved by 
substituting the living languages for the ancient, is by 
no means so great as it is commonly imagined. He 
who is familiar with the Latin and Greek grammar, will 
find but little trouble in acquainting himself with the 
grammar of the Romanic and Germanic languages. 
Whoever knows German and Latin, will acquire the 
vocabulary of those languages much more quickly and 
firmly than others, because most of the roots and stems 
and their meanings are already known to him. A greater 
part of the time that is devoted to the ancient lan- 
guages, therefore, is a help in the study of the modern. 
Classical philology is the foundation for modern phil- 
ology, and Latin especially is so indispensable for the 
scientific treatment of the latter that it seems incom- 
prehensible how professional authorities {Manner vom 
FacJi) could for a moment admit that men should be en- 
trusted with the instruction of modern languages, even in 
schools of higher standing, who are not required to prove 
their thorough acquaintance with a language from which 
all the Romanic languages are directly derived, and by 
which the English has indirectly been greatly influenced. 
But the most decisive ground against the proposition, 
to substitute the study of modern languages for that of 
the ancient, may be found in the fact that the latter will 
accomplish greater results for the most thorough educa- 
tion than the former, and it is the only channel that leads 
us to a living knowledge of a civilization from which 
our own is directl}'- derived, and by which it will ever be 
animated {Erfrischeti). Latin Grammar,, by the very 
nature of its rigor and logical sequence, is as excellent a 
medium for general discipline to the mind as Roman Law 



56 APPENDIX. 

is for the training in jurisprudence ; and in this respect 
a modern language cannot be substituted for it any 
more than the Pandects could be replaced by the code 
Napoleon. The Greek language unites with the perfect 
clearness of its logically grammatical structure a rich- 
ness, a flexibility, a capability to adapt itself to every 
need of expression in language, a fullness and transpar- 
ency in composition, a euphony that is only equalled by 
Greek art with her classicism {classicitdf). All the men- 
tal faculties and powers to which creative language lays 
claim, and which the study of language develops, are 
uniformly incited by it ; the clearest conception of the 
world by which we are surrounded, the keenest observa- 
tion of human life, are reflected in it, and, moreover, it 
is as abundant in means to give the most accurate de- 
signations of thoughts and conceptions as in expressions 
for aesthetic views, moral qualities and relations, inward 
movements and conditions of mind. The very circum- 
stance which, in the eyes of our pedagogic utilitarians, 
constitutes the chief objection to the study of ancient 
languages, namely, that there is no practical aim in it, — 
this very circumstance makes it of special value for gen- 
eral culture. The instruction in modern languages, to 
the extent it is given at school, has for its mission to 
teach the student how to write and speak the language 
accurately. To reach this aim will be the main object 
of both teacher and pupil. In classical training the 
mere usage is not the aim, but rather a thorough un- 
derstanding of language, i. e., word formation^ etymology, 
grammatical and logical analysis, bearing on a general 
development of the mind, a broader scope of intellectual 
training. In the acquisition of a modern language the 
average student will deem it sufficient to know how to 



APPENDIX. 57 

■ express his thoughts, whereas in classics he must know 
WHY he should choose such a word or such a phrase, 
the shade of distinction and the accuracy of meaning 
being involved. 

We are willing to admit, however, that ancient lan- 
guages are not studied merely to know them, but in 
order to interpret and read with accuracy, and by means 
of such knowledge, their classical authors ; and it is only 
this aim that is intelligible to the conception of the aver- 
age student; he does not as yet realize the benefit of 
this process of mind-building and intellectual develop- 
ment, nor would it be advisable to dwell on this subject 
with him for any length of time ; it is better to let him 
exert his mental powers in the performance of a work, 
the immediate purpose of which he understands, while 
the deeper insight into a mental training is as yet be- 
yond his reach. But for his domain the instruction in 
modern languages will answer the same purpose with 
this difference, that he is learning how to speak and 
write them besides, and, viewed in this respect, it might 
appear as if there were no essential difference between 
the two. But the modern languages that come in ques- 
tion in the curriculum of our schools are more closely 
identified with German than with Greek and Latin. 
Therefore they do not compel the student to render 
clear through grammatical and logical analysis as in the 
case of the ancient languages, whatever he is to translate 
from the foreign language into his own, or vice versa; 
they enable him to a far greater extent to content him- 
self with the mechanical proceeding that consists in 
mere exchange of individual words with the like in the 
other language. 

For the purpose of laying the foundation of a general 
H 



58 APPENDIX. 

discipline in language and thought, the ancient lan- 
guages are better adapted, because they require greater 
departure from common usage, a more definite bearing 
of the particular instance to the general rules, a greater 
mental activity. Again, the knowledge of these lan- 
guages is equally valuable to every one who wishes to 
acquire a higher academic education, because by it only 
can we have a clear conception and understanding of 
classical antiquity. There are those who look down on 
the limited knowledge in the realm of nature, the im- 
perfect scientific methods, the absurd notions of the an- 
cients, with a certain self-sufficiency, and being conscious 
of our great progress, they feel convinced that it is not 
worth the while to burden ourselves for years with the 
explanation of writings from which we can indeed learn 
nothing more ; yet the two facts can never be done 
away with that the spiritual life of the ancients has laid 
the foundation of our own, and that it contains elements 
of civilization whose worth is so great that to neglect or 
ignore them would cause a fatal reaction upon our entire 
civilization. 

To understand in its true light the science and cul- 
ture of the present day, to value justly their missions 
and doings, one must be able to trace them to their ori- 
gin ; and though this need, may not become manifest in 
all spheres, yet none can wholly avoid its recognition. 
Science has taken its terminology mostly from the 
Greeks, or at least, has formed it from Greek roots ; and 
it is exceedingly difficult, besides causing great loss of 
valuable time, to interpret it to those who are not familiar 
with the language from which it is derived. But even 
our scientific conceptions, our ethical and Eesthetic 
views, our ideas of art, are so closely related to those of 



APPENDIX. 59 

classical antiquity, that many of them must remain in- 
comprehensible to him, who has no knowledge of the 
former. But it is more important still, that at least 
those of our nation whom a higher academic education 
is to enable to assume the leadership (and this is the 
mission of our Gymnasia and universities) should pene- 
trate deep enough into the spirit of classical antiquity, 
to make use of its inexhaustible treasures in our national 
life, which the artists, poets, orators, historians and phi- 
losophers of Greece and Rome have bequeathed to us, 
in order to study by their own efforts and conception, 
and not merely through a second or third medium, the 
spiritual life of a nation, whose culture is so unexcelled 
and unique, as that of the Hellenists, a people who, 
with the soundest realism united the gift to spiritualize 
everything in the world and to animate it with the breath 
of beauty. It is needless to prove anew after what has 
been said before that such a course is impossible, when 
one does not know the language of such a nation. 

Exceptionally great minds may sometimes penetrate 
with surprising ease, by means of translations, or with 
a comparatively limited knowledge, into the spirit 
whence it emanated, when there is affinity with their 
own ; but it does not follow, that they would not 
have succeeded still better, had they possessed a more 
thorough knowledge of the original, and still less, that 
these few exceptions should enable us to regard this 
fact as applying to all. For example, Schiller was not 
a great Greek scholar, and yet he was thoroughly im- 
bued with the Hellenic spirit. But he deeply lamented 
that fact in his earlier education, and if, on one hand, 
he wrote " the Gods of Greece," and " the Bride of Mes- 
sina," without knowing much Greek, he also described 



60 APPENDIX. ' 

in his " Diver " the wonders of the sea, and in his 
'' Tell," the mountains of Switzerland in the most vivid 
manner, without ever having seen either ocean or Alps. 
It does not follow from this instance, that it is useless 
to view the world with our own eyes, nor that a knowl- 
edge of the Greek language is unnecessary for him who 
wishes to obtain a classical education. 

Though there are many who after leaving school or 
college abandon the reading of Greek and Latin 
authors, we find not only among the philologists, who 
of course follow it up, the historians and the theolo- 
gians, but also among the naturalists, mathematicians, 
jurists and physicians many men who have kept up a 
lasting interest in ancient literature, and who take up 
their Tacitus and Horace, their Homer and Sophocles, 
their Herodotus, Thucydides and Demosthenes, per- 
haps also their Plato or Aristotle, in the original. 
And also those who do not follow this course, will, pro- 
vided they pursued their studies in the Gymnasia with 
zeal and fidelity, be enabled to understand and to en- 
joy the old authors even in translations, and the more 
recent works that are founded upon them or that treat 
on classic ages, and also the monuments of ancient art, 
much more thoroughly than they could without that 
preparation. But the Gymnasia are not intended to 
teach young people such things as may serve commonly 
for a livelihood. If that were their only purpose they 
would have to be divided up into many preparatory 
courses for specialties. Algebra and Stereometry like- 
wise are not carried on by many after they leave school, 
but for all that, it is not considered useless to have 
them taught in the course. The same relation holds 
good with all the branches taught in the Gymnasia 



APPENDIX. 61 

without exception. The higher the course, the more it 
will include studies for which the average scholar may 
have no special occasion later on in life ; in other words, 
what most of them abandon and in time forget in their 
details. Modern languages are no exception to this. 

The preacher in the country needs the dead lan- 
guages, in which the Scriptures are written, for his 
vocation much more than the living foreign languages, 
which nobody understands in his congregation. Even 
in smaller cities, unless they are located in a border 
province, the government employee, the lawyer, the 
minister and the physician, as a rule, will get along 
without them. But should they on that account be 
left out of the course .'' It would have to be done if 
the Gymnasia had for a mission to teach only what all 
the scholars needed in their vocations for a later 
period in life ; but theirs is a higher, a nobler aim. 
They are to lead to that general education which is 
considered the basis for all scientific and professional 
pursuits ; and it is the very uniformity of this prepara- 
tory training for all the various branches into which 
our knowledge of to-day is divided, that gives the best 
security for the intellectual life {geistigeii Lebetis) of our 
nation ; it is so indispensable to success in our univer- 
sity life that only the most superficial mind could cherish 
the idea that university lectures could be so arranged as 
to answer the requirements of young people whose pre- 
paratory course of instruction was designed for different 
purposes and was organized to supply the needs of 
various divergent causes. One might, for instance, treat 
the natural sciences in such a manner that bol/i Greek 
scholars and those who have no knowledge of termi- 
nology could be benefited alike ; on the same principle 



62 APPENDIX. 

they say that lectures might be held on the history of 
ancient philosophy or on the effect of Greek art and 
literature on modern art, that could be understood by 
those who do not know a word of Greek, have never 
read a Greek poet or prose writer, have heard but little 
if anything about Greek history, mythology, etc., as 
those whose minds have been disciplined for years in 
those things. 

But this very mental training of youth has been 
often misconceived and misinterpreted as mere learn- 
ijig. They did not understand, did not realize, that in 
this training the question is not to acquire a certain 
amount of knowledge and ability in any one direction 
for life, but that their mission is to drill and develop 
the mental powers in general, to awaken the mind 
and to secure a clear conception of all that renders 
man's life valuable ; that for them it is of much greater 
importance how to learn than what to learn. We 
admit that the latter has likewise its claim, but the 
measure by which the worth of learning is to be judged 
is not the mechanical one of usefulness for certain pur- 
poses, but rather the one that commands the greatest 
influence over the formation of mind and character. In 
our universities and academic institutions youth are not 
to consider those things of greatest importance that are 
of most frequent occurrence in vocations of daily rout- 
ine life, but those that have in themselves the highest 
worth, those which grant the best nourishment of mind 
and heart. If measured from that standpoint a knowl- 
edge of classics and their foundation as now taught in 
early youth will maintain its high position in the future 
as in the past, and thus will ever remain a blessing for 
the spiritual life of our nation. 

E. Zeller. 



[It is superfluous to remark that the authors of the following 
articles are scholars of the highest rank, not subject to prejudice, 
not worshippers of any " Fetish," in religion or education. When 
such men speak on the Greek Question, their verdict is as nearly 
final as a verdict on such a subject can be. Special attention may 
well be given to the remarks of each of these writers, on the inade- 
quacy and misdirection of so much of our classical instruction.] 



[From the Princeton Review, March, 1S84.] 

THE STUDY OF GREEK, 



The ends of education are discipline and knowledge. 
Of these, discipline, if the word be taken in a broad 
sense, is to be ranked first. Power is worth more than 
acquisition. The capacity to reason well is a higher 
possession than an acquaintance with the recorded rea- 
sonings of others. To be eloquent, to be able to persuade 
and move men, is to be preferred to familiarity with ora- 
tions and addresses. To discern beauty in art, to detect 
deformity, — much more, the ability to paint well or to 
sing well, or to excel in the actual work of an artist in 
any department, — is something more precious than a 
learned acquaintance with what artists have done. In 
general, it is the increase of mental force, the refine- 
ment of sensibility and of perception, the facility in use 
of the faculties, whether strictly rational or aesthetic, 
which constitutes the main end and aim of culture. 
When this result is not attained, the best fruit of educa- 



64 APPENDIX. 

tion is missed. Wliere life, and force, and the creative 
impulse are absent, learning sinks into pedantry. There 
are such degenerate periods when originality dies out. 
Such, for instance, was the age of the Byzantine writers 
in the decline of the Greek Empire. Knowledge per- 
forms its best office when it spurs to independent ac- 
tivity and furnishes materials for advancement in dis- 
covery and invention. We may find an illustration in 
the military art. In the wars of the French Revolution, 
the Germans at first followed in general the tactics and 
strategy of the Great Frederick. He was a soldier of 
genius. Against Napoleon, a greater genius still, they 
were beaten in every encounter. At length they learned 
Napoleon's ways, and combined Europe overcame him. 

The objection to the study of Greek and Latin that 
they are " dead languages," hardly merits attention. 
This phrase, which seeks to attach the gloom and use- 
lessness of things that are dead to classical studies, is a 
part of the clap-trap of the adversaries of learning. It 
is an old and stale method of decrying these studies. 
If no language could be worth studying which one did 
not wish to speak, or which is not spoken to-day, the 
objection would have weight. But as there are living 
tongues — for example, the dialects of Patagonia and 
Central Africa — which it is not advisable to bring into 
the college curriculum, so it is possible that there are 
nobler types of speech which belonged to nobler races 
now no more, that it is expedient to study for what they 
are and for what they help us to learn. 

The objects of study, the object-matter, are the world 
and man. The " world " is here the synonym of nature. 
It embraces the physical universe, including the earth, 
its productions, and its inhabitants other than men. 



APPENDIX. 65 

This is the reahn of the natural and physical sciences. 
The grand progress of these studies is the most striking 
feature of the times, as regards the advance of know- 
ledge. No one can be called an educated man at this 
day who is ignorant of the departments of inquiry which 
deal with nature. They provide when earnestly pursued 
a discipline of their own. But they can never super- 
sede as a means of culture the study of man. This is 
the "proper study of mankind," the supreme object of 
curiosity, and source of mental and moral development. 
In this statement, religion is not forgotten ; but it is 
through the contemplation of man primarily and of 
nature, that we learn of God. Man — whd:t he is, what 
he has thought and done, the civilization which he has 
created — this is that object of study, to which belongs 
a transcendent worth. In this study, embracing history, 
philosophy, politics, literature, religion, are the foun- 
tains from which cultivation is to be derived. To an in- 
dividual cultivated thus, the sciences of nature gain a 
new quality, an ideal element, a suggestiveness, of which, 
independently of this advantage, they are destitute. 

Now at the foundation of a thorough and comprehen- 
sive survey of nature there lies one branch of knowledge. 
At the foundation of the thorough and comprehensive 
study of man there lies another. Each of these two 
fundamental studies is essential to the full understand- 
ing of things that now are — of nature as it is spread 
out before us, and of humanity in its present advanced 
condition. In other words, the present scene, in order 
to be radically comprehended, must be looked at in the 
light of these two fundamental studies. 

Mathematics, which deals with the relations of num- 
ber and space, is at the basis of the physical and even 
I 



66 APPENDIX. 

of the natural sciences. Physics and astronomy rest 
upon it. It is the key to the understanding of the astro- 
nomic system. Its formulas are the scheme of the 
creation. There is so much of truth in the speculation 
of Pythagoras, who made number the life and essence of 
the universe. The combinations which chemistry has 
to explore, even the disposition of the leaves on the 
bough of a tree and of the blossoms on a stalk, are, we 
are told, conformed to mathematical formulas. Math- 
ematics, then, in relation to nature, which is one of the 
two grand objects of study, is the fundamental science. 
It necessarily holds a throne of honor in a system of 
liberal education. 

We are now looking predominantly at the objects of 
study. It is well, however, to consider at the same time 
its disciplinary value and effect. There are not wanting 
those who think lightly of the influence of the mathe- 
matics on the intellect. It is frequently said that, 
instead of qualifying one to reason, mathematical science 
not only furnishes no help in this direction, as regards 
probable reasoning, with what we are chiefly concerned 
in practical life, but that it positively weakens the capa- 
city to judge correctly in cases where demonstration is 
out of the question. It leads one to demand a sort 
and degree of proof which the nature of the case does 
not admit of. Hence it may engender an unreasonable 
and hurtful scepticism. These considerations have 
been insisted on by many writers, among whom are 
Sir William Hamilton and Macaulay. Nor are they 
without force. But mathematical study does cultivate 
the attention and the power of definition. It is a dis- 
cipline of the attention. A bright-minded boy, with his 
classical author and his dictionary open before him. 



' APPENDIX. 67 

may look out a word, and then look out of the window ; 
he may intermit his attention ; he may carry forward an 
undercurrent of thought on heterogeneous topics ; and 
yet his progress in making his translation, sorely hin- 
dered though it may be, is not utterly suspended. But 
such a boy cannot advance an inch in Euclid without an 
absolute concentration of his mind upon the process of 
ratiocination with which he is concerned. Now to gain 
the habit of attention is half the battle in education. 
He who has learned to keep his mind fastened on the 
work before him has advanced a long step in mental 
training. So in mathematical studies accuracy of de- 
finition is indispensable. The proposition must be 
exactly stated, and so must each of the premises and of 
the inferences. Loose statement goes for nothing. 
This precision in thought and expression, it need not be 
said, is an invaluable attainment. 

Analogous to the relation of the mathematics to the 
sciences of nature is the relation of the Grasco-Roman 
history and civilization to our modern society. The 
ruling nations on the borders of the Mediterranean, 
the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews stand in this 
seminal relation, if one may so say, to modern civiliza- 
tion. The legacy which they left is incorporated into 
the existing institutions and culture of the European 
nations and of their offshoots. The roots of the present 
are to be sought in the past — in that "monarchy of the 
Mediterranean " which included under its sway the 
Greek with his science and letters, the Hebrew with his 
religious faith, and which centered in the Romans, with 
their genius for rule, their civil law and polity. This 
genetic connection of the existing civilization with the 
literature, philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence of antiquity 



68 APPENDIX. 

belongs to the providential order. It is the course 
which the world's history has taken. As God has made 
nature mathematically, so He has governed the life and 
development of mankind as here indicated. We are on 
the bosom of a broad river, which is to be traced back 
to its fountains in Hellas and Rome. New nations have 
come upon the stage, though of the same Aryan fam- 
ily. New factors have mingled in the historic develop- 
ment. Christianity has supplanted the "gods many 
and the lords many " of the ancient peoples. Still the 
traces of antiquity are everywhere discernible. 

Thus it is impossible to study humanity in the course 
of its development to that degree of advancement which 
the European nations have reached, and it is impossible 
to understand profoundly the present scene in which we 
are acting our part, unless we go back to antiquity and 
acquaint ourselves well with the peoples that have ex- 
erted this deep, potent, abiding influence in moulding 
the character and shaping the destiny of the nations 
coming after them. The geologist might as well aspire 
to understand the earth by merely inspecting what lies 
on its surface as the student to understand the present 
without exploring the past, and, in particular, without 
an intimate acquaintance with the literature, the polity, 
and the composite life of Greece and Rome. 

How shall this knowledge of Antiquity be obtained ? 
It can be obtained, after a fashion, at second-hand. 
But for a "liberal" education, for that direct and pen- 
etrating view of ancient society which alone satisfies 
the ideal of such a culture, the languages of Greece and 
Rome must be learned. In the study of them the youth 
is put into immediate intercourse with the mind of the 
ancients. The veil is lifted. Such is the vital relation 



APPENDIX. 69 

of speech to thought that the peculiar genius of a peo- 
ple expresses itself to the discerning student in their 
language. Moreover, say what one will of the value of 
translations, the literary works of antiquity can never 
be fully comprehended and appreciated through them. 
If this were possible to a genius like Goethe, — and it 
is not possible to such as he, — this would not prove 
that it is equally possible to ordinary men. Then as 
instruments for the investigation of the monuments of 
the mind and work of antiquity — -not to speak of his- 
torical study in general — the ancient languages, Greek 
as well as Latin, are of the utmost consequence. The 
necessity for the study of these tongues we found, then, 
mainly on their importance as a part and a means of 
the study of antiquity — a study indispensable in a lib- 
eral course of training. 

This general consideration may be followed by a 
more special remark on the literary value of the pro- 
ducts of the Greek mind. These are of unmatched ex- 
cellence. One writer, Shakespeare, excels all others in 
a certain exuberance of genius, an abounding wealth of 
invention ; and he has the advantage of being pervaded 
by the Christian element. On the whole, however, 
when we take into view both matter and form, the finest 
productions in literature are the dramas of Sophocles. 
Homer and Sophocles ! Where shall we look for an- 
other two upon a level with them ? There are no phil- 
osophical writers equal to Plato and Aristotle. No 
orations have ever surpassed those of Demosthenes. 
No historian has ever outstripped Thucydides. The 
verdict of ages which affirms the transcendent merit of 
the Greek authors is not a groundless tradition. It is 
not the result of a prejudice inspired by a peculiar 



70 APPENDIX. 

training. It is a verdict not to be set aside by the 
preference of an individual. It has a catliolic char- 
acter ; it is the united judgment of men of taste and 
culture through a long course of generations. Can the 
student of literature who aims at a truly liberal culture 
in this department alone, afford to pass by the master- 
pieces of Greek genius, or know them only through the 
medium of modern versions, the bes't of which must fail 
to reproduce the color and flavor of the original ? 

The adversaries of the position here taken are prone 
to say that the Greeks themselves had no Greeks before 
them ; they were the authors of their own literature and 
culture ; why should we not exercise a like self-reliance ? 
The answer must be an exhortation to modesty. We 
are not Greeks. The simple fact is that the Greeks 
were a pre-eminently gifted people. They stand at the 
head of that section of mankind which exhibits a power 
" to light their own fire." They learned much from older 
nations. But they were original and creative beyond 
all precedent and beyond all example in subsequent 
ages. Plato did not claim too much for his countrymen 
when he contrasted them with other nations, like the 
Phoenicians, through their intellectual life and profi- 
ciency in knowledge. It is no disgrace to a nineteenth- 
century American to go to school to the Greeks. They 
are still, in their own lines, the leaders of mankind. 
They are the masters. The objection to which we here 
refer is of a piece with the logic of one who should infer 
from certain instances of self-taught individuals who 
have climbed to the pinnacles of science that it would 
be well to abolish schools and colleges. It is an exam- 
ple of the fallacy of making a rule out of the exception. 
Dr. Franklin ran away from home and stood before 



APPENDIX. 71 

kings ; therefore, whoever would stand before kings 
should run away from home. Attica was about as large 
as Rhode Island. Rhode Island is a noble little com- 
monwealth. Yet it has enjoyed political liberty longer 
than the democracy of Athens lasted, and in the midst 
of the blazing light of this much-lauded century. What 
now is, or will be the influence of Rhode Island on the 
world's history compared with the unmeasured and im- 
perishable influence of Athens .? Whence the difference ? 
When men plume themselves on their ability to do for 
themselves what the Greeks did in their day, the ques- 
tion to be settled is whether they manifest a just self- 
confidence or self-ignorance and conceit. 

In connection with what has been said above, there 
is an important thought which there is only room here 
to indicate. There is an expansive effect of the study 
of the ancients, which is well likened to the influence of 
foreign travel. We take a journey, not in space but 
backward in time. We live for a while in the distant past. 
The want of this wide, genial, but subtle cosmopolitan 
spirit is felt in the case of not a few able men who have 
never been students of Antiquity — " self-taught" men, 
perhaps. In their mental view we miss an " atmos- 
phere." It is a picture without a background. Their 
intellectual horizon is too near. There is no underly- 
ing sense that there were brave men before Agamemnon. 

Viewed on the side of discipline the study of Greek is 
a study of language and a gymnastic in the art of inter- 
pretation. In both of these respects it is of unequalled 
efficacy. Its whole structure, its precision and flexibil- 
ity, its capacity for expressing the most delicate shades 
of thought, its harmony, make it without a rival as af- 
fording an insight into the nature and possibilities of 



72 APPENDIX. 

human speech. The same qualities raise it to the same 
rank as a means for the training of the interpretative 
faculty. Apart from all reasoning, experience shows 
that equal effects are not capable of being produced by 
the study of the modern languages. As to the oral use 
of these tongues, it is common to find in Europe those 
who speak them glibly, but have not the least claim to 
be thought educated. The knowledge possessed by 
couriers and ciceroni has its uses, but it is not culture. 
It is found that those who are taught in ihe Real schulen 
of Germany are not even, as a rule, so competent to 
pursue the studies of natural and physical science as 
are those who have passed through the classical curricu- 
lum. It may be said that if the modern languages 
were taught as elaborately as the Greek is taught, the 
result might be different. In the first place, this is 
a thesis for which there is no proof. In the second 
place, if the modern languages were taught after a more 
exhaustive method, if philological analysis and re- 
searches into the genesis of words and grammatical 
forms were introduced, an outcry would be raised against 
this mode of study as an unwarrantable and unpracti- 
cal consumption of time. The disciplinary value of 
Greek has been established beyond all dispute, by its 
perceived results. Nor is it impossible to point out 
the rationale according to which this benefit follows. 

If Greek were given up as a required study in the 
liberal^ course, the danger is that it would go where He- 
brew is gone. It would come to be studied by minis- 
ters almost exclusively. The result of such a change 
to the tone of culture would be most disastrous. 

At this point we are brought to the grand objection 
against the requirement of Greek among the studies 



APPENDIX. 73 

preparatory to college. It is the objection frequently 
urged against classical studies generally. As a matter 
of fact, it is alleged, these languages are not learned. 
At the end of a period of study, varying from five to ten 
years, the average pupil cannot read the Greek and 
Latin authors with any facility. Unable to read them, 
he lays them aside forever. Not unfrequently, he sells 
the books which he has laboriously conned. As for any 
keen relish or genial appreciation of the ancient authors, 
it is very seldom gained. And so far as they are a 
means of giving an insight into the Greek (or Roman) 
genius and life, and thus of bringing a large and pro- 
found understanding of history and of modern civiliza- 
tion, their influence on college students is not very 
potent. How can it be thought wise, when there is so 
much to be learned, to spend a large portion of the 
precious years of youth in poring over Greek text- 
books ? Is not a good knowledge of French and Ger- 
man worth more, in this stirring age, than a smattering 
of Greek ? 

This objection cannot be confuted by a sneer. It is, 
to say the least, plausible. It amounts in our judgment, 
however, to nothing more than a deserved rebuke to 
methods of teaching which have come into vogue, and 
to a loud call for reform. Far less is done than might 
be done in the years given to classical study. The 
philological motive has unduly predominated, at the 
expense of what may be termed the literary and histori- 
cal, in the modes of instruction. Discipline, valuable 
as it is, has been turned into a fetish. Classical teachers 
have come to be satisfied with the gymnastic benefit 
gained by the student in these long years. They have 
said practically, and sometimes have avowed, that it is 
J 



74 APPENDIX. 

of little consequence whether the pupil acquires the 
power to read the ancient writers or not. 

Let not the philological discipline be undervalued. 
The mature man profits by the muscular plays which 
made so great a part of his business in the years of 
childhood. Constantly, though insensibly for the most 
part, he was gaining vigor, and laying up a store of 
health. The careful study of a few Greek writers, the 
weighing of the value of the particles, the precise dis- 
crimination of the shades of meaning, the constant exer- 
tion of judgment in determining the sense of words in 
the light of the context, leaves a lasting effect on the 
intellect, even though the Greek alphabet itself, in the 
course of years, should be forgotten. 

But this effect is far from being all that may be fairly 
demanded, considering the time and labor expended by 
the young in these studies. There has been a great 
progress in Greek and Latin scholarship within the last 
forty years. Competent teachers are far more accurate 
in their instruction than was the case formerly. Gram- 
matical researches have been pushed much further. 
Comparative philology, and especially the opening of 
the Sanscrit, have thrown light on all the Aryan tongues, 
and the Greek and Latin among them. 

It is clear, however, that there has not been a corres- 
ponding advance in the interest taken by young stu- 
dents in the classics, or in the appreciation of their 
contents. Virgil and Horace and Homer were read 
often with more relish in old times, and better retained, 
in memory, than now. With all the accuracy of knowl- 
edge and of teaching, compared with the more slovenly 
scholarship of a previous day, few attain to any con- 
siderable facility in reading the ancient authors. They 



APPENDIX. 75 

are laid aside, as was remarked above, without a pang. 
The reasons are not far to seek. Man}^ teachers pro- 
ceed on the assumption that their pupils are all to be 
philologians. Their drill is fashioned with a view to 
make them adepts in this line. They cram boys with 
the minutiae of grammar, instead of letting them learn 
the essentials, and allowing them to widen their gram- 
matical knowledge gradually in connection with the 
reading of authors, and their advance to higher stages 
in culture. Novices are harassed, burdened, wearied, 
and, in many instances, permanently disgusted by a 
daily bath in the endless details of grammar. They 
must dissect the verb, find out the reasons and laws of 
word-changes, etc., and work their way through a mass 
of matter of this sort, of which Plato and Demosthenes 
knew little or nothing. Instead of setting the pupil, after 
giving him the essential concrete facts, and even while 
doing so, to make sentences and to read easy lessons, 
which contain something in the thought or story to in- 
terest his mind and reward him for his labor, the effort 
would frequently seem to be to make his path as hard 
and loathesome as it can be made. All this cumbrous 
pedantry is dignified with the name of thoroughness. 
One consequence is that by many bright-minded boys 
the study of Greek and Latin is pursued not a day 
longer than they are driven to it. In many, literary as- 
piration is chilled. Why should instruction be made a 
soulless treadmill ? Why should there not be elemen- 
tary reading-books, as formerly, which should entice 
the pupil " to get out " the translation partly for the 
pleasure which an amusing anecdote or an interesting 
passage in ancient history affords ? The consequences 
of this grammatical fanaticism, this mania of pedagogues 



76 APPENDIX. 

are deplorable indeed. Under the method which has 
extensively prevailed of late, the pupil does not read 
enough to get any considerable stock of words. He can 
put on his accents and analyze his paradigms, but he 
has so slender a vocabulary that he cannot read his 
authors. This, in brief, is the execrable Dryasdust 
method which has done more to bring classical studies 
into disrepute than all the declamation of their avowed 
enemies. If such a method were adopted in teaching 
the modern languages, the results would be similar; 
and no talk about " discipline " would avail to save such 
a method from general condemnation, if not contempt. 
"Gerund-grinder" is a not inapt designation for the 
practitioners of this sort of teaching. They should take 
for their patron saint the old German who lamented on 
his death-bed that he had not concentrated his attention 
on the dative case. They should lay to heart Matthew 
Arnold's witty saying that " the aorist was made for 
man and not man for the aorist." 

Not only must the purely philological motive and in- 
terest be reduced to its proper place ; there is likewise 
an imperative need that the study of Greek and Latin 
should be, from the beginning, the open door to the 
study of Antiquity. When Arnold of Rugby carried his 
classes through Thucydides he made the study of the 
author at the same time a study of the author's times, 
of the art of war as then practised, of civil polity, diplo- 
macy, statesmanship, etc. There is no reason why, in 
close connection with the study of the Greek and Latin 
writers, students should not be initiated into the investi- 
gation of ancient religion, of ancient art, of the growth 
and characteristics of the communities whose languages 
they are learning. In a word, ancient history, in its 



APPENDIX. 77 

comprehensive meaning, should be made an inseparable 
part and concomitant of classical study. It is practi- 
cable, with a right method and with inspiring teachers 
thus to give young men as early as about the close of 
the Sophomore year in college, such a knowledge of an- 
cient history that they shall be well equipped for engag- 
ing in the study of modern history, and in the branches 
of knowledge usually pursued in conjunction with it. 
It is not requisite for the purposes of discipline that the 
linguistic interest should be all in all. The literary, the 
Eesthetic, the historical motive may have its rightful 
prominence, and the discipline to be drawn from exact- 
ness of philology will come of itself. There are welcome 
indications of a reaction against the theory and practice 
which have done so much to provoke hostility to Greek 
and Latin. There are the beginnings of a reform. At- 
tacks on classical study will not be without use if they 
stimulate those who value it aright, to adopt a more 
rational and fruitful method. 

The propositions which the foregoing rem9.rks are in- 
tended to sustain are these : 

1. While the study of Greek (as well as of Latin) is 
relatively less important now than at a former day, it is 
still essential to a complete, a " liberal " culture. 

2. .The ground of this necessity does not lie any 
more in the intellectual discipline gained in linguistic 
study, than in the whole genetic relation of Antiquity to 
modern civilization. 

3. The study of Greek (as of Latin) should therefore 
be a part and means of the study of the literature and 
the institutions of the ancient nations. 

4. There is need of a reform in the spirit and method 
of teaching which shall adapt it to these motives and 



78 APPENDIX. 

ends ; grammatical drill must be subordinated to the 
attainment of the language as a key to the contents of 
the literature, and to a knowledge of the collective life 
of Antiquity. 

George P, Fisher. 



[From the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1884.] 

THE STUDY OF GREEK, 



There are reasons why the earliest philosophy and 
literature of the civilized world should have not only a 
transcendent interest, but a unique teaching power. 
Our abstract terms are concrete ; our simple ideas are 
complex. In the realm of mind the course of things in 
physical science has been reversed. The ancients had 
four elements ; we have fourscore, or more. But it often 
takes many of their elementary thoughts to make one of 
ours. Thus the study of the old philosophers leads us 
into a more minute analysis of the rudiments of ontology, 
and of deontology, too, than is dreamed of by their suc- 
cessors in these latter centuries. In poetry, equally, 
our comprehensive knowledge and our easy command 
of nature place us at a disadvantage. There is no scope 
for the imagination in fields of space thoroughly meas- 
ured, familiarly known, and traversed with ■ more than 
the speed of the wind. The master of a paltry coasting 
vessel who should encounter any serious peril, or bring 
home accounts of any wonderful adventure or strange 
sight, on a voyage like that described in the Odyssey, 
would be remanded to the forecastle. Yet there still 
exist on that route as rich materials for the plastic 
imagination as Homer found there: but we must go 
back to Homer to find them. It is, moreover, well that 
we should go back ; for steam and electro-magnetism 



80 APPENDIX. 

are too fast exorcising the spirits that used to dwell in 
wave and storm, in fountain, field and forest, and de- 
grading poetry into loose-jointed metaphysics, or senti- 
mental egotism, rhythmically written. We must admit, 
however, that the best translations will furnish a very 
large part of the profit and pleasure to be derived from 
the Greek classics. 

Yet not all. There is the untranslatable in every 
language, and in none more than in the Greek. There 
are, especially in Homer^ in the tragedians, and in 
Aristophanes, compound words to which we have none 
that correspond, and which drop much of their meaning 
in a paraphrase ; and there are turns of expression, de- 
scriptive traits, metaphors, which are almost despoiled 
of their pertinence and beauty either by a literal ren- 
dering or by a free translation. Take, for instance, the 
apostrophe of Prometheus to the sea, in the tragedy of 
^schylus that bears his name, — novrlwv y,v/iiuTwv dLv/iQi- 
dfiov ysXaoiua, literally, innumerable laugh of sea-waves, 
which is not graceful English. The Greek implies 
something seen and something heard, — the manifold 
glancing of the sunlight from a slightly mottled surface, 
and the gentle, gleeful murmur of the sluggish waves as 
they lap the shore. This very phrase adds a new joy 
to the seaside. There are, too, single words, phrases, 
verses, which plant themselves ineradicably in the mem- 
ory, and which are not infrequently recalled even by 
those whose Greek scholarship is neither deep nor 
fresh. It is hardly too much to say that the pleasure 
of reading and of having read the Prometheus Vinctus 
of ^schylus in the original is worth the time and labor 
spent in acquiring the capacity to read it. 

But it is not our present purpose to discuss the com- 



APPENDIX. 81 

parative worth of aesthetic pleasures ; nor are we pre- 
pared to deny that, for many minds at least, equal en- 
joyment with that derived from the ancient classics may 
flow from the literature of our own or other modern 
tongues. What is now proposed is to consider the 
worth of Greek, in its practical aspects, for a liberally 
educated man, whatever his profession may be. 

In the first place, the study of Greek is of immeasur- 
able worth in forming a good English style. Compara- 
tive philology is as essential to a knowledge of grammar 
as comparative anatomy is to a knowledge of the human 
frame. No man ignorant of other languages under- 
stands the powers and capacities of his own. Especially 
is grammar learned by acquaintance with languages that 
have a grammar, which the English hardly possesses, 
and which those modern languages that are the abraded 
debris of the Latin possess very imperfectly, but which 
is preeminently the attribute of the Greek. There is 
not an inflection of a variable Greek word which does 
not represent a corresponding inflection of thought, and 
a corresponding expression of the thought in English. 
Conversance with such a language tends to create pre- 
cision, copiousness, and flexibility in the choice and use 
of words. Then, too, the translation of Greek into 
English teaches the pupil as much English as Greek. 
In the competitive endeavor to furnish the best render- 
ing of the Greek text, he enriches his English vocabu- 
lary, and acquires invaluable experience in its use. It 
is virtually an exercise in English composition, with this 
difference in its favor : that the young writer of themes 
is confined within his own narrow range of thoughts 
and the words that represent them, while in translating 
Greek he is obliged to seek and ambitious to find ade- 

K 



82 APPENDIX. 

quate expression for what is picturesque, graphic, grand 
and beautiful, far beyond anything of his own that he 
will write for years to come, if ever, yet enabling him, 
whenever he has anything to say, to clothe it in such 
drapery as shall render it presentable. 

This is not a matter of mere theory. It is perfectly 
easy to detect the absence of classical training in a 
writer. There are undoubtedly exceptions, but so few 
as not to disprove the rule. In many years' experience 
as an editor we never failed to detect a difference in 
favor of contributors who had received a classical edu- 
cation ; and in some cases, and with reference to writers 
of superior ability and reputation, we discovered the 
deficiency in that regard from internal evidence before 
we otherwise obtained knowledge of the fact. Nor was 
it unusual for such a writer to impose upon the editor 
hardly less labor in bringing a valuable paper before 
the public than had been employed in its first compo- 
sition ; thus rendering it certain that, when he published 
anything on his own account, he was largely indebted 
to a competent reviser or proof-reader. The men to 
whom w^e refer were all well educated, doubtless famil- 
iar with one or two modern languages, and it may be 
supposed with the amount of Latin that used to be 
taught in the upper classes of our academies and high 
schools. One of them was the president of one of our 
oldest and best endowed colleges, after an eminent 
career at the bar and on the bench of his native State ; 
and he not only in his letters expressed deep regret that 
he had learned, in his boyhood, little Latin and no 
Greek, but showed in papers, otherwise of great merit, 
a sad lack of proper linguistic training. 

It would be well worth our while to see how a man of 



APPENDIX. 83 

this sort would conduct the war against Greek. Its 
assailants, so far as we know, have had and have mani- 
fested the benefit of classical training in a style with 
the genuine stamp and ring ; and one of the ablest and 
most graceful of them, among the recreations of his old 
age, found special delight and won no little reputation 
by the version of certain well-known nursery melodies 
into Greek verse, in metres with which the most fastid- 
ious scholar could find no fault. 

It may, indeed, be said that every man does not need 
to be a good writer. True. But it is equally true that 
no well-educated man ought to be incapable of being 
•a good writer. There are few men of culture who do 
not perform more or less pen-work, whether in private 
correspondence or in reports or addresses to a smaller 
or larger public ; and hardly less than good manners, 
the free and graceful use of the pen on ordinary occa- 
sions is essential to the ornament and dignity of social 
life. It is especially desirable that our scientific men 
should keep themselves on the same plane with their 
brethren in other lands. We crave for them the ease, 
suppleness and elegance of diction so eminently char- 
acteristic of the great English scientists of our day, who 
may have obtained ascendency among their peers chiefly 
by demonstration and argument, but who in large part 
have owed their power in moulding general opinion and 
belief to their skill in handling that most subtle and 
delicate of organs, our vernacular English. At least, 
let our scientific professors and writers learn a lesson 
from ^sop's curtailed fox, and keep out of the trap till 
they can make the amputation of classical culture, which 
some of them commend, acceptable to all their kind. 

To pass to another consideration, we look to our lib- 



84 APPENDIX. 

erally educated men for the guardianship and oversight 
of our educational institutions. Even the most sanguine 
of the anti-Greek host do not anticipate the speedy ad- 
vent of the time when Greek will not form an impor- 
tant, and in some quarters a favored, portion of the 
high-school curriculum. Some years ago the chairman 
of the committee on modern languages, appointed by 
the visiting board of one of our colleges, when asked 
which of four recitation-rooms, devoted to as many 
tongues, he would first honor by his presence, frankly 
replied, " It makes no manner of difference to me ; I 
know not a word of either of those languages." We 
should be sorry to see the time when a graduate of that 
same college may be constrained to make a like impar- 
tial visitation of a classical school or academy under his 
charge. 

Careful, discriminating cognizance of every kind of 
school-work by competent trustees or supervisors was 
never so necessary as now, when a large part of that 
work is in the hands of novices, who take the ofJEice of 
teacher on their way from college to some permanent 
profession. The utter incapacity to follow a class in a 
simple lesson in the Greek Reader would be taken by 
the class for much more than it means, and the incom- 
petent classical scholar would suffer far more than he 
deserved as regards respect for and confidence in his 
general intelligence and scholarship. One would hardly 
covet the position of the college president already men- 
tioned, who must either have kept clear of the Greek 
department, or felt an oppressive awkwardness in visit- 
ing it. It would be unfortunate were one of our colleges 
to establish an alternative curriculum, which should at 
some future time render its most honored g-raduates unfit 



APPENDIX. 85 

to preside creditably in its councils. This argument 
seems to us of no little weight ; yet it would lose its 
force were the study of Greek to lapse into general dis- 
repute and neglect. Let us pass to some reasons why 
it cannot so decline, but, even in case of temporary dis- 
credit, must be restored to a permanent place among 
the essential departments of liberal culture. 

The Greek is in many respects the most important 
factor of the English lauguage. Of the words used and 
understood by persons of narrow intelligence and little 
reading, while there are many derived from the Greek, 
the greater part are of other origin. Of the additional 
words used and understood by educated persons, by 
reading and thinking persons, and by those conversant 
with the arts and sciences, more, probably, are derived 
from the Greek than from all other languages beside. 
The same is true of words that have been formed and 
have come into use within the last half century, and of 
those which are at this moment pressing their way into 
current use. Of the sources of English diction, some 
are drained and dry, others are intermittent ; the Greek 
alone maintains a constant and copious flow. It fur- 
nishes the names of all the sciences, and of many of 
the arts ; of many geometrical figures ; of almost every 
mathematical, astronomical, and physical instrument ; 
of many of the old and of almost all the new surgical 
instruments ; and of most of the various instruments, 
apparatus, and methods employed in the practical appli- 
cations of science. Chemistry derives from it the larger 
and more important part of its nomenclature. In botany 
it has given names to all the classes and orders of the 
Linnaean system, and, equally, to the series, classes, sub- 
classes, and divisions thereof, in the system that has 



86 APPENDIX. 

superseded it. There is no department of life, no line 
of business, hardly an invoice of goods, never a column 
of advertisements in a newspaper, that is not bristling 
with Greek words; The man who makes an invention, 
precious or worthless, deserving a high-sounding name 
or craving one to catch the popular ear, resorts nowhere 
but to the Greek for the term that he needs. In a late 
edition — we dare not say the last — of Webster's quarto 
Dictionary, of words beginning with ana there are 159, 
with anth 64, with chl 27, with chr 90, with geo 60, with 
ph 436, with ps 86, with sy 294. To these should be 
added about 100 out of 126 words, with these several be- 
ginnings, in the Supple ment, a few of which are the 
same words with different meanings, but most of which 
are different words. We have in these several classes 
more than thirteen hundred words, not twenty of which 
are of other than Greek derivation. The list, to be sure, 
embraces several large clusters of words from a com- 
mon root, it may be, not larger than some from Latin 
roots that might be named ; but if Greek roots are 
really more prolific than any others, it only shows their 
vitality when thus transplanted, and their special adapt- 
ation to English soil. There are also several termina- 
tions not uncommon in our language which, perhaps 
with no exceptions, certainly with few, indicate a Greek 
origin. Such are atry,gen, ics, metry, ogy,phy, sis, tomy. 
Many of the words thus ending are, indeed, included in 
the thirteen hundred ; but the greater part of them 
would be found under other initial letters. 

A great many of these words are technical words, the 
meaning of which it is important, or at least becoming, 
that scientific men and practical men of liberal culture 
should know. In saying this, we would place special 



APPENDIX. 87 

emphasis on the word hiow. To know that a certain 
instrument is designated by a certain word is not to 
know the meaning of the word ; a liberally educated 
man ought to know why the instrument is called by that 
name rather than by any other. Now the technical and 
scientific terms derived from the Greek are, without ex- 
ception, significant names, descriptive of the properties, 
objects, or classes of objects which they represent, and 
so descriptive of them that one previously unacquainted 
with them would learn what they are from their names 
alone. Thus a Greek scholar who had never heard of 
a thermometer, or a microscope, or a phototype, would 
at once know what they were ; while a man ignorant of 
Greek, though he might know that certain objects were 
called by these names, could give no reason why the 
thermometer might not as well be called a phototype. 
These technical and scientific words — we cannot cite 
an exception — bear the precise and ordinary significa- 
tion of the Greek words from which they are derived or 
compounded. A very limited Greek vocabulary, such 
as is acquired in the minimum classical course in our 
colleges, suffices to make these words easily intelligible, 
and thus to open to the student not only the nomencla- 
ture of his own specific science or profession, but the 
entire range of terms in all the arts and sciences. More- 
over, as has been said, the terms within this range are 
constantly multiplying. Whole sheaves of them have 
come into being within the memory of the writer of this 
paper, and he has often seen a brand-new word, which 
but for the little of Greek he knew would have puzzled 
him and teased his curiosity, perhaps in vain, but which 
was its own prompt interpreter. This inrush of Greek 
will continue so long as classification, invention, and 



88 APPENDIX. 

discovery shall still be progressive and aggressive ; for 
the Greek furnishes a most ample affluence of words 
which combine the qualities of intelligibleness, euphony 
and facility in the graceful formation of compound 
terms. Apart from any considerations connected with 
Greek literature, one who has lived in clear light as to 
so large and important a portion of our own language 
cannot think with patience of any theory of liberal ed- 
ucation which should leave this, else the most luminous 
region of our English vocabulary, in perpetual eclipse. 
If our technological schools aim at making their grad- 
uates anything more than very narrow specialists, they 
will find it necessary to introduce Greek into their cur- 
riculum. We should be sorry for them to dispense with 
Latin ; but Greek is by far the more important of the 
two. 

There exist exaggerated notions as to the time re- 
quired for the study of Greek. It has been repeatedly 
said and written that it demands the hardest work of 
four years in a course preparatory for college. This 
may have been seemingly true of one or two schools a 
quarter of a century ago ; but in most of our classical 
schools the entire preparatory course then occupied but 
three years, and was often completed in two. Indeed, 
at a still earlier period, when school vacations were 
merely nominal, when all that a studious boy did was to 
study, and when plain living did more to keep students 
in vigorous health than hygienic restrictions and rules, 
do now, it was no uncommon thing for a boy who had 
more brains than his father had money to fit himself for 
college in a year. The requirements then included 
more Greek and Latin than at present, and much less 



APPENDIX. 



89 



of mathematics, and very little beside, and a year then 
was probably equivalent to two years now ; for about 
one-third of the school year is now taken up by vaca- 
tions and holidays, and our school-boys are encouraged 
or at least permitted, to have not a few engrossing ob- 
jects and pursuits aside from their school-life. In most 
of our good preparatory schools Greek now occupies a 
portion, by no means the principal portion, of from two 
to three years; being commenced in many of them in 
the last quarter (ten weeks) of the third year before 
entering college. We have before us the course of 
study in one of our principal schools, in which Greek is 
studied for three years. The Greek in this course em- 
braces four books of Xenophon's Anabasis, one of 
Herodotus, four of the Iliad, portions of the Cyropaedia, 
and the Greek Testament, with exercises for the last 
year and a half in reading at sight Xenophon, Herodo- 
tus and Homer, and exercises during nearly the whole 
time in writing Greek. This is considerably in advance 
of the requirement for admission in any of our New 
England colleges ; and the time spent in writing Greek 
might well seem excessive and unreasonable, were not 
this exercise so arranged and conducted as to supersede 
in great part the formal study of the grammar, and by 
enriching the student's vocabulary to save much of his 
mechanical toil in turning over the leaves of his lex- 
icon. 

We have before us a full statement of the time de- 
voted to Greek in a private school, which always sends 
to college admirably prepared pupils, and which has 
its clientelage almost wholly among families in which 
there would be no disposition to shorten the term, or 
to apply undue stimulants to the diligence, of school 
L 



90 APPENDIX. 

life. Greek in this school is commenced two years and 
a quarter before entering college. The lessons are 
from two to four each week. The entire number of 
lessons does not exceed three hundred. We are as- 
sured on the best authority that little more than half 
that number of lessons would suffice for a boy who made 
study his vocation, instead of his a-vocation, or side- 
calling, secondary to base-ball, military drill, and mis- 
cellaneous amusements. 

It must be borne in mind that the lessons in Greek 
in our good schools are not, as of old, mere recitations, 
but what they purport to be, hours of direct and positive 
instruction ; superseding a considerable portion of the 
study formerly required, and facilitating all the rest. 

It ought, in this connection, to be emphatically stated 
that in the method of teaching Greek there has been in 
all our best schools not so much an essential improve- 
ment as an entire revolution, and one which must very 
soon sweep the old, cumbrous methods out of the way. 
The grammar is now studied, not in mass, but in great 
part from words and sentences as they occur in reading. 
The mode in which one acquires the command of his 
vernacular tongue is copied in every respect in which it 
can be made availing. The scholar learns what words 
are by seeing where they stand and how they are used. 
For much of the labor of the lexicon the pupil's own 
sagacity is substituted. The Greek tongue is justly re- 
puted as the most copious of all ancient languages, and 
yet it is meagre in its roots. It is rich in its wealth and 
unequalled power of combination. The student used 
to be suffered to regard every word as a separate entity, 
to be sought by itself in the lexicon, without reference 
to any kindred words. He is now taught to analyze a 



APPENDIX. 91 

compound word, and to determine its meaning by its 
component parts and its context. Thus reading at 
sight, which would formerly have been considered as a 
more recondite art than Hindoo jugglery, is now made 
easy, and a very slender vocabulary, with an ^active 
mind, will enable a boy to feel quite at home in a page 
of the Anabasis, or in one of Lucian's Dialogues, which 
he had never seen before. 

Nor let it be imagined that for a boy who is going to 
be an engineer, or an architect, or a chemist, the hours 
Spent in learning Greek are, even in the utilitarian view, 
so much lost time. They will certainly facilitate his ac- 
quisition of the more difficult modern languages, espe- 
cially of the German and its allied tongues. They will 
save him a great deal of labor in consulting dictionaries 
for words of Greek parentage. They will preclude em- 
barrassing ignorance and mortifying blunders as to 
terms which he ought to understand. They will render 
the writing of English very much less toilsome, and thus 
will bring him into easier relations with the members of 
his own profession, and with the public at large. 

The importance of the modern European tongues has 
been, urged as a reason for dropping Greek in a scientific 
or practical education. With regard to these languages, 
the great mistake has been that in our colleges and clas- 
sical schools they have been studied too much in the way 
in which Latin and Greek used to be studied, as if they 
were not only dead languages, but incapable of being 
raised to life. Better methods are fast coming into use. 
French and German are now taught as they might be 
learned in Paris or Dresden. The pupil acquires the 
language by using it, rather than as a condition precedent 
to using it. This improved method is fast making its 



92 APPENDIX. 

way, and will soon become universal. From one of our 
schools, second to none in its reputation for Greek, the 
pupils now go to college capable of conversing with a 
good degree of fluency in either French or German, and 
many of them in both ; and we doubt whether more 
time is there consumed in Greek, French and German 
by a boy who takes all three, than used to be occupied 
under the old method, and to much less advantage, by 
Greek alone. 

There is one argument against Greek, which we have 
not attempted to meet, because we have not known how 
to deal with it. It is alleged that the study of Greek is 
not only a waste of time, but that it cramps the mind, 
employs it in work unsuited to the development of ca- 
pacity for scientific labor and for practical usefulness, 
and is a drawback on one's success in other than lit- 
erary pursuits. A charge like this admits of specifica- 
tions, and ought to be brought only by those who can 
make some show of damage. But when a member in 
the fourth generation of the most successful family in 
America ascribes to Greek all the misfortunes and fail- 
ures of his ancestors and kindred, we might almost sus- 
pect him of anti-republican aspirations ; for the only 
misfortune that can be conceived of in the history of 
that family is their failure to become a race of heredi- 
tary monarchs. Then, again, when the man who, con- 
fessedly at the head of his department of science in this 
country, has only his peers among the foremost scien- 
tific men in Europe complains of having been weighted 
down by Greek in his boyhood, we doubt whether any 
ambitious youth will spurn the weight if with it he can 
start on a career so very full of honor. Men of this 
sort are not valid witnesses, and we have no others. 



appe;mdix. 93 

When the men who linger in the outer courts of science, 
and try in vain to enter, or when those who in business 
or in political life are perpetually stumbling and falter- 
ing, can show us that such smattering of Greek as they 
have has been the insuperable obstacle in their way, it 
will be a fit time to inquire how and why. 

Fortunately for us, the experiment of dispensing with 
Greek at the option of candidates for university honors 
in the mathematical and physical sciences has been tried 
in Germany, and it has been found that even for these 
sciences a regular classical course, including Greek, 
furnishes a better preparation than is attained by the 
non-classical, but most skillfully devised and ably con- 
ducted curriculum of the Realschulen. Such is the al- 
most unanimous testimony of the professors in the 
Prussian universities. We could hardly expect more 
favorable results in this country, especially when we 
bear in mind that the Prussian educational system is in 
every department thoroughly organized, and adminis- 
tered by instructors who have passed a prescribed test; 
while it would be impossible in our country, except by 
slow degrees and with numberless exceptions and fail- 
ures, to establish a uniform and adequate system for the 
preliminary training of scientific students. 

We rest our case here, trusting that we may have 
added some little weight of truth and reason in behalf 
of classical education as the best possible discipline for 
scientific study, and for the arts, pursuits, and employ- 
ments of liberally educated men. 

A. P. Peabody. 



